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H 

Practical    Stage    Directing 
for   Amateurs 

A  Handbook  for 
Amateur  Managers  and  Actors 


By 

Emerson  Taylor 


E.  P.  Dutton  and  Company 
681  Fifth  Avenue.  New  York. 


Copyright,  1916 
Bt  E.  p.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  Introductory     1 

II  The  Choice  of  a  Play     ....  7 

III  Organization 24 

IV  Rehearsing         62 

V  The  Amateur  Actor's  A-B-C  ...  98 

VI  Make-Up 126 

VII  The  Stage  and  the  Scenery  .   .   .  146 


>M*?^^#aRAVVW 


Practical  Stage  Directing 
for  Amateurs 


PRACTICAL  STAGE  DIRECTING 
FOR  AMATEURS 


INTRODUCTORY 

Until  comparatively  recently,  the  pro- 
duction and  performance  of  plays  by 
amateurs  have  been  judged  by  the  least 
exacting  standards.  Charity  spread  her 
mantle  wide  over  shortcomings  which  were 
somehow  considered  inevitable;  and,  con- 
versely, there  was  very  little  effort  on  the 
part  of  those  engaged  in  the  performance 
to  accomplish  any  very  ambitious  purpose. 
Critics  were  scrupulously  careful  to  re- 
member every  single  actor  in  their  gener- 
ously glowing  tributes;  the  audience  was 
always  willing  to  express  the  conviction 


2  Amateur  Stage  Directing 

that  "after  all,  amateur  plays  do  have  a 
charm  of  their  own,  so  different  from  real 
plays," — and  meant  nothing  equivocal. 
It  is  perfectly  true,  as  we  all  know,  that  a 
kind  of  pleasant  interest  did  attach  to 
these  friendly  gatherings.  They  were  in 
their  way  capital  fun. 

But  lately  we  have  come  to  believe,  and 
probably  with  good  reason,  that  there  is 
a  whole  lot  more  to  be  got  out  of  amateur 
performances  which  are  organized,  played 
and  judged  in  a  rather  different  and  more 
exacting  spirit.  As  a  growing  element  in 
our  theater-going  population  are  demand- 
ing (and  getting,  ^^ac^  the  croakers t)  a 
better  class  of  plays,  something  of  the 
same  element  is  asking  for  improvement 
in  taste  and  execution  in  amateur  pro- 
ductions. What  has  happened  in  the  case 
of  the  amateur  musician  is  now  happen- 
ing in  the  case  of  the  amateur  actor.  He 
must  do  better.     And  responding  to  this 


Introductory  3 

demand — if  one  can  so  name  that  which 
is  no  more  than  an  indefinite  but  insistent 
feeling — the  actor  has  found  that  he  has 
gained  in  every  way.  If  amateur  players 
aim  as  high  as  they  can ;  if  they  work  hard 
to  give  a  performance  which  modestly  asks 
to  be  judged  by  professional  standards;  if 
they  try  to  get  all  the  values  possible  out 
of  the  play;  if,  instead  of  merely  reading 
lines,  they  make  a  real  attempt — with 
what  light  they  have — to  impersonate 
character,  we  think  there  is  a  great  gain 
all  round.  Not  only  is  it  more  fun,  but 
there  is  also  a  marked  and  permanent  ad- 
vance in  accepted  standards.  Not  only 
are  rehearsals  more  interesting,  when  they 
are  made  the  occasion  of  intelligent  study, 
but  they  are  a  whole  lot  more  amusing 
than  those  of  the  older  type. 

One  would  probably  disclaim  immedi- 
ately and  with  sincerity,  when  advocating 
higher  standards,  any  desire  to  make  of 


4  Amateur  Stage  Directing 

amateur  acting  one  of  the  pleasures  which 
we  Americans  are  accused  of  taking  sadly. 
But  in  chosen  lines,  something  in  us  makes 
us  want  to  excel;  and  if  this  feeling  has 
come  in  these  days  to  color  the  aspirations 
of  those  who  find  entertainment  in  acting, 
we  can  only  accept  what  is  an  accom- 
plished fact,  and  help  a  little  to  make  the 
best  of  it.  Perhaps,  even,  the  educators 
are  all  wrong  in  beheving  that  the  general 
instinct  for  self  expression,  as  it  finds  its 
outlet  by  means  of  the  stage,  should  be 
carefully  nurtured  and  developed.  It 
may  be  that  the  schools,  with  their  pag- 
eants and  their  carefully  trained  dra- 
matics, are  wasting  time  terribly.  But, 
after  all,  we  appear  committed  to  the  ex- 
periment; no  class  is  taking  the  drama 
with  such  seriousness  as  the  teachers. 
And  since  no  experiment  is  worth  any- 
thing at  all  unless  it  is  performed  thor- 
oughly and  with  all  the  resources  of  the 


.  Introductory  5 

laboratory,  it  is  well  for  us  to  help  the 
teachers  and  the  investigators  all  we  can. 
If  the  steadily  growing  and  spreading  in- 
terest in  the  drama  both  as  a  fine  art,  a 
civic  asset,  a  source  of  intelligent  enter- 
tainment, and  a  force  in  education,  re- 
sults in  a  general  raising  of  our  critical 
standards  and  an  intensifying  of  our  sym- 
pathetic appreciation,  what  vast  good  will 
be  accomplished !  And,  confident  that  the 
performance  of  plays  by  amateurs  is  one 
of  the  very  best  means  of  quickening  their 
perceptions  of  the  play's  dramatic  and 
artistic  values,  we  applaud  whole  heart- 
edly  any  attempt  to  "give  a  good  show." 

One  cannot  teach  acting  by  written 
formulas  and  rules;  a  great  part  of  the 
success  of  a  good  stage  manager  depends 
on  the  personal  equation.  But  it  is  be- 
heved  possible,  at  least,  to  enumerate  the 
principles  on  which  a  good  stage  produc- 
tion is  based,  and  to  make  generally  avail- 


6  Amateur  Stage  Directing 

able  some  of  the  elementary  points  of  the 
technical  knowledge  vitally  necessary  to 
both  actor  and  manager.  And  that  is 
what  the  following  notes  attempt  to  ac- 
complish. 


Note — To  avoid  the  necessity  of  referring  to 
an  index,  the  page-headings  on  the  right-hand 
pages  have  been  made  sufficiently  detailed  to  serve 
as  a  guide  to  the  reader. 


II 

THE  CHOICE  OF  A  PLAY 

This  first  problem  to  present  itself  to 
those  who  wish  to  give  an  amateur  per- 
formance, is  that  which  can  never  be  solved 
twice  alike.  It  seems  no  answer  at  all 
to  say  that  the  choice  of  a  play  depends 
entirely  on  circmnstances,  yet  that  is  so 
much  the  case  that  any  more  specific  an- 
swer must  bristle  with  all  sorts  of  reserva- 
tions and  explanations.  Requirements 
and  standards  are  so  diverse  and  various. 
Here  is  a  group  of  utterly  inexperienced 
young  people  who  want  to  "get  up  a 
play"  for  their  own  amusement,  or,  inci- 
dentally, to  raise  money  for  some  charity. 
Here  is  a  boys'  or  a  girls'  school,  of  sec- 
ondary grade,  where  participation  in 
school  dramatics  under  supervision  is  made 


8  Amateur  Stage  Directing 

an  incident  of  considerable,  though  sugar- 
coated,  educational  value.  Here  are  dra- 
matic clubs  of  every  grade  of  talent  and 
intelligence,  or  reading  circles,  which  for 
a  winter  have  been  studying  some  as- 
pect of  the  drama,  shifting  groups  of  in- 
finitely varied  tastes,  and  requirements, 
and  all  of  them  ask  the  one  question,  to 
begin  with:     "Wliat  are  we  to  choose?" 

While  one  can  suggest  only  with  a  cer- 
tain sense  of  diffidence,  it  is  believed  that 
there  is  one  principle  at  least  which  should 
color  and  shape  all  the  work  of  selecting 
the  right  play,  for  whatever  group  of 
amateur  players.  Select  a  play  worth 
the  trouble  and  time  that  must  he  spent 
on  it!  There  is  an  incalculable  amount  of 
time  and  energy  sadly  wasted  on  rehears- 
ing dull  stuflF  by  unknown  writers.  A 
curious  tradition,  prevalent  still,  appears 
to  restrict  the  amateur  to  material  which 
the  professional  stage  would  never  dream 


Choice  of  a  Play — Worth  Doing        9 

of  accepting — puerile  farces,  unreal  emo- 
tional pieces,  crass  and  crude  sentimental 
rubbish,  with  sugar-candy,  persecuted 
heroines,  sneering  villains,  muscular  and 
virtuous  heroes,  and  all  the  roster  of  age- 
old,  storehouse  characters  whom  Jerome 
has  held  up  for  our  ridicule  so  deliciously. 
Do  something — or  decide  to  do  somethiag 
— worth  while,  written  by  a  real  play- 
wright to  be  actually  performed  by  real 
actors.  One  must  insist  that  any  play 
selected,  though  there  be  no  other  purpose 
in  the  performance  than  the  amusement  of 
the  actors,  shall  be  well  worth  doing  well. 
And  this  means,  as  a  minimum,  that  the 
piece  shall  give  ample  opportunity  for 
good  acting  and  impersonation,  that  it  re- 
quire such  careful  staging  as  will  put  the 
stage  manager  and  his  assistants  on  their 
mettle,  that  its  interest,  whether  of  story 
or  pictorial  investiture,  or  both,  shall  be  so 
broadly  human  in  its  sympathetic  appeal, 


10         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

so  colorful,  as  to  awaken  a  real  response  in 
both  audience  and  players. 

More  specifically,  plays  of  direct  and 
strong  general  appeal,  whether  serious  or 
comic,  are  the  ones  best  adapted  (other 
things  being  equal)  for  amateur  use. 
Plays  of  sound  sentiment — not  sentimen- 
tality— which  have  self  sacrifice,  patri- 
otism, mother  love,  or  any  other  of  the 
deeply  seated  human  qualities  to  motive 
their  characters,  usually  do  well  both  for 
player  and  audience.  Plays  with  firmly 
drawn,  broadly  colored  characters,  di- 
rectly expressed  feelings,  plenty  of  action, 
and  solidly  constructed  situations  of  simple 
and  primitively  human  emotions — tears  or 
loud  laughter,  are  of  the  type  which  the 
beginner  can  apprehend  and  carry  through 
to  the  point  of  pretty  capable  and  rounded 
execution.  True,  there  is  a  rooted 
timidity  on  the  part  of  perhaps  the  ma- 
jority of  amateurs  with  respect  to  scenes 


Choice  of  a  Play — Not  too  Slight     11 

of  strong  emotion  and  tender  feeling. 
He  fears,  by  failing  to  sustain  them,  to  be- 
come merely  ridiculous.  But,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  experience,  it  is  more  often  the  case 
that  the  average  amateur  rises  to  his  best 
work  in  passages  of  just  that  description. 
It  is  closer  to  the  truth  to  assert  that  more 
amateur  plays  fail  because  the  sentiment 
is  so  slight,  the  fun  so  mild,  the  issues  so 
unimportant,  the  whole  so  thin.  It  re- 
quires the  highest  professional  skill  to  play 
a  scene  of  slight  and  delicate  texture  and 
make  anything  of  it  at  all.  In  unskilled 
hands  such  a  scene  becomes  merely  vapid 
and  empty.  No  question  but  what  it  is 
capital  practice  for  a  couple  of  amateurs 
to  study  and  practice  the  love  scenes  in 
"The  School  for  Scandal";  but  they  can 
more  completely  realize  and  set  forth  the 
values  of  robuster  scenes,  as  those  between 
(for  the  sake  of  comparison)  Petruchio 
and  Katherine. 


12         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  appearance 
of  utterly  contradicting  the  sense  of  the 
preceding  paragraph  will  be  avoided,  if 
a  certain  caution  is  appended  to  it.  Plays 
of  broad  human  appeal,  by  all  means, 
whether  gi'ave  or  gay, — but  this  does  not 
mean  that  the  amateur  actor  has  a  license 
even  to  essay  dramas  where  the  theme  and 
the  handling  involve  the  depiction  of  the 
great,  heart- shaking  tragic  emotions  of 
humanity  that  we  have  in  "Lear,"  let  us 
say,  or  in  "Macbeth."  Not  only  is  any 
such  attempt  absurd,  but  it  involves  also 
the  danger  of  fatal  errors  of  an  artistic 
sort.  Such  plays  simply  cannot  be  done 
by  amateurs.  The  exotic  quality  and  vast 
historical  perspective  of  the  Greek  trage- 
dies perhaps  safeguard  them  well  enough, 
and  naturally  their  immense  historical  and 
literary  values  commend  them  to  our 
modern  stud}^ ;  but  even  so,  it  is  a  perilous 
matter  for  the  average  amateur  to  essay 


Choice  of  a  Play — Farces         13 

one  of  those  stupendous  roles.  And  it  is 
perhaps  not  too  much  to  assert  that,  if 
tragedy  is  the  Scylla,  farce  is  the  Charyb- 
dis  to  be  avoided.  Take  the  opinion  for 
what  it  is  worth — perhaps  it  is  not  worth 
anything.  But  the  view  of  many  a  stage 
manager,  who  hopes  and  works  for  an  ef- 
fective production,  is  that  farce  is  fear- 
fully risky — though  it  is  the  type  of  play 
toward  which  the  amateur  gravitates  ap- 
parently by  instinct.  Farce  is  fearfully 
hard  to  play  well.  It  may  be  fun  for  the 
actor,  but  those  who  have  to  witness  the 
performance  of  the  average  amateur  fun 
maker  are  only  too  apt  to  suffer  sadly.  It 
would  seem  as  though  nowhere  is  the  gulf 
separating  the  amateur  and  the  profes- 
sional so  wide  and  deep  as  just  here.  Our 
friends  who  are  so  funny  when  they  do 
some  parlor  "stunt"  after  dinner,  who 
are  naturally  so  clever  and  so  witty,  nearly 
always  fade  and  droop  lamentably  when 


14         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

they  attempt  to  romp  through  the  mazes 
of  "The  Private  Secretary,"  "Box  and 
Cox,"  "AU  the  Comforts  of  Home," 
"Lend  Me  Five  Shilhngs,"  or  "The  Ama- 
zons," to  name  a  few  of  the  farces  most 
commonly  fomid  on  the  amateur  bills.  Is 
there  any  spectacle  sadder  than  the 
comedians  in  amateur  musical  plays? 
Those  faint  echoes  of  Joe  Weber;  those 
pale  shadows  of  Harry  Lauder,  William 
ColHer,  or  Eddie  Foy!  Good  enough  at 
home,  but  desperately  thin  and  unsub- 
stantial in  the  glare  of  the  "foots."  There 
is  an  imction,  a  drive,  a  curious  personal 
magnetism,  wliich  are  inseparable  from 
effective  acting  of  farce;  there  is  an  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  many  extremely  diffi- 
cult technical  tricks ;  there  is  ever  so  much 
in  the  facial  play  and  the  gesture,  vitally 
important  to  the  farceur,  and  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases  utterly  outside  the 
ability  of  the  amateur.     Broad  farce  per- 


Choice  of  a  Play — Possibilities     15 

haps  is  inevitable ;  it  is  certainly  legitimate. 
But  one  runs  the  risk  of  abysmal  failure. 

Paradoxically  enough,  amateurs  can 
oftentimes  attain  remarkable  success  in 
plays  which  are  written  in  a  mood  and  in 
an  idiom  not  quite  that  of  the  theater  as 
we  have  come  to  know  it.  The  earlier 
plays  of  Maeterlinck,  such  as  "L'ln- 
terieur," — plays  of  such  delicate  fabric 
that  they  express  no  more  than  an  atmos- 
phere or  a  mood ;  many  of  the  plays  of  the 
modern  Irislimen  and  modern  Germans, 
to  enumerate  oddly  different  types,  can 
be  astonishingly  well  interpreted  by  those 
who  are  touched  only  faintly  with  the 
habitual,  traditional  methods  of  the  stage, 
if  they  are  intelligently  and  sympatheti- 
cally handled  by  the  stage  manager. 
And  that  a  choice  of  such  plays,  given 
favorable  circumstances  and  the  proper 
audience,  is  more  than  justified  on  the 
grounds  of  their  exquisite  literary  and 


16         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

very  important  historical  qualities,  goes 
without  saying. 

For  these  qualities  of  literary  excellence 
and  historical  value  should  enter  into  the 
calculations  of  all  those  who  wish  to  take 
the  amateur  stage  at  all  seriously.  It  is 
understood  that  there  is  a  tendency — and 
a  stifling  one ! — to  make  too  much  of  such 
elements  in  a  play  at  the  expense  of  the 
dramatic;  and  this  we  believe  should  be 
vigorously  combated.  The  stage  must 
have  plays  that  can  be  acted.  But,  when 
possible,  let  us  find  these  qualities  pres- 
ent; let  us  make  the  very  most  of  them. 
To  exact  a  minimum  of  our  author,  let  us 
insist,  at  least,  that  his  language  shall 
possess  either  fidelity  to  the  time  and  the 
people  he  has  chosen — that  it  shall  have  the 
tang  of  idiom  and  of  crisp  workmanship, 
or,  if  he  writes  in  verse,  let  us  insist  that 
his  verse  have  in  it  the  genuine  worth  of 
real  poetry.     And  going  further — and  di- 


Choice  of  a  Play — Period  Plays     17 

verging  a  little — let  us  urge  that  there  is 
much  to  be  said  in  favor  of  amateurs'  try- 
ing their  wings,  whenever  possible,  in  some 
of  the  plays  of  other  times  and  other 
schools  of  the  drama.  Let  nobody  believe 
that  this  will  take  from  the  desired  good 
times  incident  to  rehearsal  and  prepara- 
tion, for  the  contrary  is  the  fact.  It  is  not 
only  infinitely  more  worth  while,  but  it  is 
a  lot  more  fun,  when  all  is  said,  to  pro- 
duce an  Elizabethan  play  (like  the  "Fair 
Maid  of  the  West"),  a  medieval  mystery, 
or  something  from  Moliere  (like  "Le 
Bourgeois  Gentilhomme"  or  *'Les 
Femmes  Savantes"),  to  name  only  a  few 
of  the  ancient  types,  than  perhaps  most 
of  the  modern  material  available  for  ama- 
teurs. Played  with  a  will,  in  accordance, 
so  far  as  we  imderstand  them,  with  the 
conventions  of  the  period,  in  every  detail, 
an  old-time  drama  of  this  sort  will  make 
rag-time  comic  opera  and  washy  "he-and- 


18        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

she"  love  stories  ajjpear  thin  and  dull 
enough.  One  must  acknowledge  the  dan- 
ger of  pedantr}'^  in  such  undertakings ;  but 
it  is  a  question  whether  the  advantages  do 
not  more  than  countervail  the  risks. 

In  choosing  a  play  with  a  historical  set- 
ting, wi'itten  by  a  modern  author,  take  care 
that  the  setting  is  faithful,  that  the  theme 
and  the  language,  the  atmosphere  and  the 
physical  details,  are  properly  in  keeping 
with  the  age  which  the  play  portrays,  that 
the  whole  is  consistent. 

Whenever  possible,  select  a  play  wliich 
will  give  fairly  equal  opportunities  to  each 
of  the  principal  actors.  This  is  con- 
fessedly very  difficult ;  but  it  is  not  well  to 
encourage  the  vanity  of  this  or  that  ama- 
teur Duse  or  Irving  by  letting  her  or  (oc- 
casionally!) him  dominate  a  play,  in  a 
star  part,  to  the  belittling  of  the  others. 
If  you  want  to  keep  the  interest  of  your 
actors  going  strong  all  through  rehearsals, 


Choice  of  a  Play — Moral  Values     19 

give  them  all  a  chance  at  one  good  scene 
anyhow.  Properly  studied,  nearly  any 
play  will  reveal  many  opportunities  in  ap- 
parently inconspicuous  parts  for  a  clever 
character  actor.  Try  to  develop  these  to 
the  limit.  Remember  always  that  what 
the  amateur  stage  manager  should  try  for 
is  balance  and  general  average  excellence. 
Since  moral  values  vary  so,  and  are  so 
largely  concerned  and  confused  with  taste, 
it  is  difficult  to  lay  down  in  a  positive  man- 
ner any  advice  as  to  the  choice  of  a  play 
based  on  or  involving  the  physical  relation 
of  the  sexes.  Young  love,  the  tender  re- 
lationships of  old  age,  marital  difficulties 
and  reconciliations,  forming  as  they  do  the 
theme  of  so  many  plays,  can  hardly  be 
avoided,  and  need  not.  But  difficulties 
arise  nearly  always  when  there  is  any  ques- 
tion of  selecting  a  play  with  a  theme  Hke 
that  of  "Monna  Vanna,"  or  "Iris,"  or  any 
of  the  many  light  farces  built  around  ad- 


20         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

ventures  in  love.  Probably  they  should  be 
avoided,  if  only  for  their  lack  of  that  broad 
human  appeal  we  laid  do^\Ti  as  a  pre- 
requisite, or,  if  not,  for  the  fact  that  plays 
of  this  sort,  to  carry,  must  be  played  with 
a  skill  transcending  that  of  the  amateur 
many  times.  Generally  speaking,  how- 
ever, there  is  not  much  likelihood  of  this 
type  of  play  being  selected  at  all  or  even 
considered,  for  obvious  reasons.  And  an- 
other reason  would  be  the  fact  that  the  nat- 
ural diffidence  most  amateurs  feel  in  play- 
ing even  the  simplest  love  scene  would 
prove  an  effectual  barrier  against  the 
choice  of  plays  involving  a  display  of 
deeper  passion  or  light-hearted  inconse- 
quence. 

With  all  diffidence,  might  one  remind 
the  amateurs  in  search  of  a  suitable  play 
of  one  limitation  on  that  choice  which  is 
sometimes  overlooked  or  disregarded? 
Let  us  be  frank,  and  acknowledge  that  no 


Choice  of  a  Play — Stage  Technique   21 

group  of  amateurs,  however  naturally 
talented  and  carefully  rehearsed,  can  ex- 
pect to  compare  in  point  of  technical  skill 
with  professional  actors.  It  is  perfectly 
true  that,  given  an  equal  training,  a  great 
many  amateurs  could  take  their  places 
away  from  an  equal  number  of  "real" 
actors  to-morrow.  The  amateur  has  an 
intelligence,  an  education,  a  range  of  cul- 
tui'e,  which,  generally  speaking,  exceeds 
and  excels  that  of  his  professional  brother. 
He  has  had  better  opportunities.  All  he 
lacks  is  hard  and  prolonged  drill  in  stage 
methods  and  conventions,  in  elocution  and 
carriage.  But,  without  this  drill,  lacking 
all  but  a  surface  knowledge  of  stage  tech- 
nique, he  appears,  whatever  his  natural 
ability,  at  a  disadvantage.  He  cannot 
produce  the  effects;  he  cannot  express 
thoughts  and  emotions;  he  cannot  even 
walk  about  the  stage.  He  can  only  ap- 
proximate, when  the  professional  can  finish 


22         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

and  round,  a  scene.  If  there  is  any  under- 
estimate of  the  amateur's  skill  here,  native 
or  acquired,  it  is  done  with  the  one  pur- 
pose of  warning  amateurs,  as  a  rule,  not  to 
choose  plays  beyond  their  capabilities. 
Use  some  common  sense  in  your  selections. 
If  your  company  is  really  experienced  and 
pretty  well  versed,  from  many  appear- 
ances, in  something  more  than  the  rudi- 
ments of  stage  technique,  this  caution  can 
be  fairly  disregarded,  and  you  need  not 
hesitate  to  select  a  play  which  brings  you 
into  dii'ect  competition  with  a  professional 
tradition.  This,  because  the  f resliness  and 
spirit,  the  conscientiousness  and  the  intel- 
ligence of  the  actors  furnish  a  secure 
enough  basis  to  build  on.  But  if  your 
company  is  made  up  of  beginners,  how- 
ever keen,  tread  softly.  Remember  that 
you  can  accomplish  results  only  between 
very  cu'cumscribed  lines,  and  do  not  try 
for  too  much.    Better  a  good  performance 


Choice  of  a  Play  23 

of  a  simple  play  than  a  partial  or  complete 
failure  and  wreck  with  a  difficult  play. 
See  what  your  "leading  lady"  can  do  with 
a  piece  like  "Cousin  Kate"  before  you  en- 
courage her  to  essay  Rosalind. 


Ill 

ORGANIZATION 

If  we  suppose  the  play  has  been 
selected,  the  dates  of  the  production  set- 
tled, and  everybody  concerned  ready  to  be- 
gin preparations,  the  matter  of  proper  and 
not  too  elaborate  organization  presents  it- 
self for  consideration.  For  it  is  idle  to  ex- 
pect good  results  on  the  night  of  perform- 
ance unless  all  the  machinery  needed  for 
launching  the  play  is  in  good  running  or- 
der. Certain  duties  must  be  assigned  to 
certain  individuals;  there  must  be  a  thor- 
ough preparation  of  the  text  of  the  play; 
the  cast  and  the  understudies  must  be 
chosen;  the  general  executive  work  both 
of  the  stage  and  of  the  box  office  must  all 
be  portioned  off  and  set  in  motion.  And 
all  this  must  be  attended  to  before  re- 

24 


Organization — The  Manager      25 

hearsals  begin,  for  the  sake  of  comfort  and 
ease  and  efficiency  all  combined.  Prob- 
ably all  these  details  of  preparation  and 
organization  will  be  undertaken  by  some 
executive  committee  of  the  club  or  school. 
But  however  the  arrangements  are  made, 
let  them  be  in  the  hands  of  clear-headed 
persons  who  work  without  any  fussing. 

THE   STAGE   MANAGER 

The  very  first  thing  to  attend  to,  in  pre- 
paring for  an  amateur  play,  is  to  select  the 
very  best  Stage  Manager  available.  On 
this  point  there  can  be  absolutely  no  dis- 
cussion. Without  a  stage  manager,  you 
can  get  no  good  results.  Unless  rehears- 
als are  conducted  and  directed  by  some 
one  outside  the  cast,  who  can  look  at  the 
thing  from  the  outside,  there  is  absolutely 
no  use  trying.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  in  amateur  plays,  though  he  does  not 
appear   at   the   performance,    the   stage 


26         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

manager  is  of  far  more  importance  than 
the  most  talented  actor.  On  him  rests  the 
main  responsibihty  for  the  play's  success 
or  failure. 

What  about  his  duties  and  his  posi- 
tion? 

The  stage  manager  is  the  ruler  of  re- 
hearsals, the  mainspring  of  the  whole  per- 
formance, and  from  his  decisions  there  is 
no  appeal.  It  is  only  on  this  understand- 
ing that  he  should  accept  the  post.  It  is 
his  conception  of  the  play  which  is  pro- 
duced; it  is  he  who  says  that  the  actors 
shall  speak  and  move  thus  and  so ;  his  direc- 
tions even  as  to  minutice  of  make-ups  and 
costumes  which  are  to  be  carried  out  loy- 
ally. Naturally,  if  the  interest  of  the 
actors  is  awake,  if  the  members  of  the  club 
or  the  school  have  certain  ideas  they  would 
like  to  see  carried  out,  they  will  be  glad 
enough  to  offer  suggestions  in  the  proper 
way  and  proper  spirit,  and  the  stage  man- 


Organization — The  Manager      27 

ager  will  doubtless  be  able  and  glad  to 
make  use  of  many  of  them.  A  capital  co- 
operation is  possible,  with  the  exercise  of 
tact  on  both  sides.  But  it  must  be  clearly 
apprehended  that  the  man  who  directs  and 
is  responsible,  is  the  man  who  has  the  final 
word  without  argument.  While  he  will 
welcome  suggestions,  he  must  not  abate 
his  authority  for  an  instant.  The  actors 
are  to  do  as  he  directs;  his  ideas  as  to  the 
details  of  the  production  are  to  be  accepted 
without  question.  Assistance  he  must 
have,  but  never  interference.  Choose 
somebody  for  the  position  of  stage  man- 
ager in  whom  entire  confidence  may  be 
placed,  and  then  let  him  go  ahead  with  a 
free  hand. 

And  there  must  be  one  stage  manager, 
not  several.  No  amateur  play  was  ever 
anything  but  a  weariness  to  the  flesh  for 
the  actors  and  a  trial  of  patience  to  the 
audience,   which   was   attempted  with   a 


28         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

"committee"  in  charge  of  rehearsals  and 
performance. 

Sometimes  the  stage  manager  is  called 
tlie  "coach,"  and,  as  such,  his  work  is  lim- 
ited practicallj^  to  training  the  actors  in 
reading  lines  and  in  the  rudiments  of  stage 
deportment.  But  a  broader  and  truer 
conception  of  his  duties,  based  on  a  better 
understanding  of  the  stage  manager's  posi- 
tion on  the  professional  stage,  is  gradually 
coming  to  prevail ;  and  this  makes  the  place 
one  of  supreme  importance  and  au- 
thority. We  should  think  of  the  stage 
manager  just  as  we  think  of  the  conductor 
of  an  orchestra.  As  the  latter  "reads"  a 
symphony,  so  the  former  "reads"  a  play. 
Both  are  interpreters.  Each  has  a  clear 
and  personal  conception  of  tempi,  values, 
shadings  of  all  kinds;  each  makes  use  of 
his  performers  to  express  this  conception 
with  what  skill  and  perfectness  is  j^ossible. 
Just  as  the  musical  director  makes  use  of 


Organization — TJie  Manager      29 

the  varied  qualities  and  powers  of  wood 
winds,  strings,  and  brasses,  blending  them 
all  in  such  relations  as  he  believes  will  best 
express  the  meaning  and  character  of  the 
composition,  so  the  stage  manager  en- 
deavors to  blend  into  a  homogeneous  and 
intricately  patterned  single  effect,  the  per- 
sonalities of  the  cast,  the  scenery,  lights, 
costumes,  accessories,  and  the  text  of  the 
play.  Each  has  a  task  far  greater  and  far 
more  worth  while  than  merely  to  instruct 
the  various  groups  of  musicians,  or  the 
several  actors  ranged  before  him,  how  best 
to  perform  their  several  parts. 

Thus  conceived,  the  position  of  stage 
manager  will  require  a  pretty  capable  per- 
son to  fill  it.  While  there  is  no  need  for 
him  to  be  an  accomplished  actor,  any  more 
than  there  is  need  for  a  conductor  to  be  a 
virtuoso  on  the  violin  or  the  flute,  he  must 
have  a  good  knowledge  of  the  effect  he 
wants  any  individual  actor  to  produce  and 


30        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

be  able  to  explain  it.  He  must  have  read- 
ing enough  and  imagination  enough  to 
grasp  intelligently  and  with  sympathy  the 
pictorial,  historical,  or  dramatic  values  of 
any  given  scene.  He  must  have  enough 
artistic  instinct  and  training  to  arrange* 
masses  and  smaller  compositions  of  figures 
effectively.  He  must  have  as  full  a  tech- 
nical Ivnowledge  of  stage  limitations  and 
exigencies  as  may  be.  Most  of  all,  the 
stage  manager  must  have  that  curious  gift 
or  trait  called  personality  which  makes  it 
easy  for  other  persons  to  obey  him,  and 
that  fellow-gift  which  enables  a  man  to 
see  his  own  ideas  clearly  and  to  transmit 
them  to  others.  Was  it  by  oversight  that 
no  mention  has  been  made  of  good  temper 
and  civility?  Plenty  of  good  stage  mana- 
gers have  neither ;  but  in  the  long  run  it  is 
the  patient  man  with  a  quiet  voice  who 
gets  results,  not  the  noisy  person  or  the 
nagger. 


Organization — The  Staff  31 

THE  STAFF 

Since  the  duties  of  staging  even  a  simple 
play  are,  after  all,  both  complex  and  mani- 
fold, it  is  very  necessary  to  make  a  division 
of  them,  from  the  beginning  of  organiza- 
tion. While  the  stage  manager  must 
have  supreme  authority,  it  is  i)lain  that  he 
will  require  assistance.  Not  from  any 
"committee,"  be  it  said  again.  His  help 
must  come  from  regularly  appointed  staff 
officers,  so  to  call  them,  each  with  a  special 
and  limited  group  of  duties  to  attend  to. 

These  officers  are : — 

Business  Manager 
Stage  Carpenter 
Property  Master 
Electrician 

Prompter    (or  Assistant   Stage 
Manager) . 

To  the  Business  Manager  must  be  dele- 
gated all  the  work  connected  with  what,  in 


32         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

professional  jargon,  is  called  "the  front  of 
the  house."  Such  duties  as  supplying 
press  notices,  printing  and  advertising, 
programs,  seat  sale,  patroness  list,  the 
engaging  of  orchestra  and  ushers,  are,  in 
general,  those  which  fall  to  his  share,  to- 
gether with  all  work  incident  to  the  han- 
dling of  tickets  and  the  checking  up  of  ac- 
counts. 

The  Stage  Carijenter,  under  orders  of 
the  stage  manager,  provides,  sets  up,  and 
shifts  the  scenery  and  stage  settings,  raises 
and  lowers  the  curtain,  has  general  charge 
of  what  may  he  called  the  mechanical  side 
of  the  production.  His  crew  of  four  or 
five  helpers  will  be  divided  into  "grips," 
who  handle  the  standing  sets  of  scenery, 
and  the  "flymen,"  who  from  the  fly  gal- 
lery raise  and  lower  drops  and  ceilings  and 
any  special  things  like  extra  strip  lights 
or  borders  which  are  handled  from  aloft. 
The  stage  manager  must  provide  the  car- 


Organization — "Props'^  33 

penter  with  a  full  Scene  Plot,  showing  the 
diagram  of  the  stage  and  a  full  description 
and  enumeration  of  the  pieces  of  scenery 
needed  for  each  act. 

The  Property  Master  (good  old 
"Props,"  most  fertile  of  contrivers,  true 
son  of  Autolycus !)  provides  and  cares  for, 
also  places  in  the  proper  place  for  use, 
every  article  needed  by  the  characters  of 
the  play  in  the  course  of  the  action,  except 
costumes.  Bob  Acres's  dueling  pistols. 
Lady  Macbeth's  candle,  the  telephone  in- 
struments, letters,  table  ware,  daggers, 
telegraph  blanks,  glasses  of  wine  or  vials 
of  poison  (cold  tea  in  either  case!),  the 
pens  and  ink,  the  thousand  and  one  things 
which  are  handled,  referred  to,  lost,  found, 
destroyed  or  discovered  in  the  thousand 
and  one  plays  of  record, — all  of  them  fall 
to  the  lot  of  worthy  "Props"  to  be  bor- 
rowed or  stolen  for  the  performance.  For 
never,  according  to  ancient  and  accepted 


34         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

tradition,  does  "Props"  buy  anything  he 
can  get  by  means  dark  and  devious.  Per- 
sonal properties,  so  called, — an  eye  glass, 
a  ring,  a  handkerchief,  say — used  by  only 
a  single  character  and  carried  on  his  per- 
son, are  usually  looked  out  for  by  the  actor 
himself.  The  responsibility  of  "Props"  to 
have  every  needed  thing  exactly  in  its 
place  at  the  right  moment  does  not  usu- 
ally extend  to  the  oversight  of  these  few 
articles.  He  is  provided  with  a  complete 
list  of  properties  required. 

The  Electrician^  who  must  have  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  electrical  work,  pro- 
vides and  manipulates  all  the  lights  of 
whatever  sort,  as  the  requirements  of  the 
play  demand.  He  must  be  provided  by 
the  stage  manager  with  a  Light  Plot, 
which  accurately  shows  when  and  where 
(by  means  of  suitable  cues)  sunrises, 
moonlight,  grate  fires,  and  similar  special 
lighting  effects  are  needed  by  the  action 


Organization — Prompter  35 

of  the  play,  also  what  colors  and  degrees  of 
illumination  from  footlights,  borders,  strip 
lights,  spot  lights,  at  all  times,  so  he  can 
have  his  wiring  and  connections  arranged 
in  plenty  of  time. 

The  duties  of  the  Prompter,  who  may 
also  be  the  stage  manager's  handy  man,  are 
specifically  to  stand  throughout  the  per- 
formance, script  in  hand  and  eyes  on  the 
script,  ready  to  supply  instantly  the  neces- 
sary words  to  an  actor  forgetting  his  lines. 
Naturally  he  must  be  thoroughly  familiar 
with  the  play, — not  only  with  the  text,  but 
also  through  constant  attendance  at  re- 
hearsals, with  the  pace  and  the  manner  of 
performance.  Thus,  he  must  not  confuse 
an  intentional  pause  on  the  actor's  part 
with  a  possible  forgetfulness.  He  must 
know  the  play  so  well,  that,  if  an  actor 
skips  a  page  or  so  by  mistake  (which  hap- 
pens in  the  best  regulated  stage  families ) , 
he  can  turn  without  hesitation  to  the  place 


36         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

at  which  the  errant  one  returns  to  the  fold. 
As  handy  man,  the  prompter  may  prop- 
erly be  asked  to  see  that  the  actors  have  the 
copies  of  the  text  and  the  few  properties 
w^iich  are  often  necessary  at  rehearsals, 
he  may  often  be  of  service  in  planning 
scenery  and  costumes,  dm*ing  the  perform- 
ance he  may  act  as  call  boy,  warning  the 
actors  of  the  time  when  an  act  will  be 
called ;  all  the  way  through,  he  should  be  at 
the  stage  manager's  call  for  the  thousand 
small  offices  occurring  at  each  rehearsal. 
Thankless  work,  but  mighty  useful,  that 
of  the  promjiter ! 

It  should  be  noted  that  none  of  these 
staff  officers  should  take  part  in  the  j)lay 
being  j)roduced.  They  fill  responsible 
and  busy  positions,  all  of  them,  which  will 
take  all  the  time  and  thought  any  ama- 
teur may  fairly  be  expected  to  expend. 
In  all  dramatic  clubs,  it  is  a  capital  plan 
for  the  members  to  take  turns  acting  and 


Organization — Tlic  Cast  37 

helping  "back  stage,"  or  "out  in  front"  (in 
the  box  office ) .  Knowledge  of  every  de- 
partment of  the  work  of  that  quaintly  com- 
plicated institution,  the  theater,  has  a  real 
value,  of  one  sort  or  another. 

SELECTING   THE   CAST 

Whenever  possible,  as  in  the  case  of  a 
school  or  college  dramatic  society  with  a 
large  membership,  the  cast  of  a  play 
should  be  selected  by  means  of  very  ex- 
haustive tryouts.  This  is  a  democratic 
method;  it  is  as  fair  as  any  other;  it  pro- 
motes a  capital  and  healthy  rivalry;  it 
starts  the  play  off  with  the  very  real  ad- 
vantage of  having  a  cast  which  is  prob- 
ably very  keen  for  the  work  in  hand. 
Trials  may  be  as  prolonged  and  as  exhaus- 
tive as  one  pleases;  but  their  object,  it  is 
beheved,  should  be  (1)  to  determine  any 
given  aspirant's  fitness  to  appear  in  the 
particular  play  in  hand  at  all,  and  (2)  his 


38        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

or  her  suitability  for  this  or  that  particular 
role.  The  first  set  of  tests,  that  is,  will 
tend  to  bring  out  a  given  actor's  probable 
capacity  for  (say)  eighteenth  century 
comedy,  and  will  reveal  his  entire  unsuit- 
ability  (perhaps)  for  rural  melodrama; 
will  show  in  him  the  makings  of  a 
capital  low  comedian;  will  make  evident 
his  utter  incapacity  for  doing  any  of 
the  roles  in  "Lady  Windermere's  Fan." 
By  this  means  also  the  hopelessly  unfit  will 
be  weeded  out  promptly.  The  second  set 
of  tests,  however,  will  bring  candidates  for 
any  given  role  into  healthy  and  keen  com- 
petition directly  with  one  another. 

In  establishing  any  set  of  standards  by 
which  to  judge  candidates,  some  attention 
will  have  to  be  paid  to  an  aspirant's  phys- 
ical suitability  for  the  part.  A  great  deal 
of  nonsense,  of  course,  is  talked  in  these 
days  about  this  matter  of  selecting  only 
"types."     Many     forget     that     skillful 


Organization — Tlie  Cast  39 

make-up  and  a  talent  for  impersonation 
will  enable  a  good  actor  to  appear  most 
creditably  in  parts  for  which  natm-e,  to 
judge  from  his  physical  conformation, 
never  intended  him.  But  he  whose  figure 
was  fashioned  for  a  Falstaff  can  hardly  fill 
the  eye  of  the  critical  in  the  part  of  a 
Mercutio ;  the  girl  who  looks  like  a  Lydia 
Languish  is  at  a  disadvantage  if  she  aspires 
to  play  Lady  Macbeth.  Character  parts, 
generally  speaking,  depend  less  on  nat- 
ural physical  qualifications  than  other 
parts ;  it  is  perfectly  right  to  depend  on  the 
make-up  box  to  help  build  up  an  imper- 
sonation; it  is  safe  to  say  that  one  may 
gTant  considerable  leeway  in  the  matter  at 
all  times.  But  in  parts  which  demand  of 
the  actor  perfectly  obviously  necessary 
physical  traits,  such  as  beauty,  grace,  mus- 
cular strength,  height,  littleness,  leanness 
or  solidity,  candidates  not  possessing  them 
should  usually  be  passed  over. 


40         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

It  is  well  also  to  take  into  account  the 
natural  quality  of  the  candidate's  voice,  its 
flexibility,  its  control. 

Lastly,  judge  the  candidates  in  the  be- 
ginning on  their  natural  intelligence  in 
conceiving  the  part  they  wish  to  essay. 
Not  alone  should  they  look  their  parts 
(which  make-up  will  assist  in),  read  the 
lines  decently  (where  good  training  will 
work  wonders),  but  they  must  feel  the 
part.  They  must  reveal  from  the  outset 
that  they  have  some  sort  of  a  conception 
(even  a  wrong  one,  if  only  it  is  clean  cut) 
both  of  the  nature  of  the  character  and 
of  the  general  way  and  means  by  which 
the  character  can  be  expressed.  One 
grants,  of  course,  that  it  is  asking  a  great 
deal  of  the  amateur,  with  his  meager  tech- 
nical resources,  to  outhne  a  character  at  all 
convincingly.  Your  professional  knows 
(or  should  know!)  all  the  conventional 
tricks  of  speech  and  bearing  by  which  at 


■*t 


Organization — The  Cast  41 

least  obvious  characteristics  are  revealed, 
and  so  from  the  beginning  has  an  advan- 
tage denied  the  amateur.  But  the  latter, 
if  he  has  any  natural  sense  of  stage  deline- 
ation, or  any  realization  of  the  nature  of 
his  part,  will  nearly  always,  however 
crudely  and  imperfectly,  reveal  enough  of 
it  to  rank  him  above  or  below  his  rivals. 
If  he  has  the  sense  of  his  part,  good  coach- 
ing will  do  wonders  for  him.  If  he  lacks 
it,  the  best  stage  manager  alive  cannot  give 
it  to  him.  Look  for  something  positive  all 
along  the  line. 

As  a  general  rule  (to  leave  those  stand- 
ards based  on  natural  fitness),  it  will  be 
found  most  satisfactory  to  try  out  candi- 
dates for  a  play  on  a  basis  of  their  mastery 
of  parts  similar  to  those  they  wish  to  under- 
take, chosen  from  some  other  piece.  If, 
for  instance,  it  is  intended  to  present  "The 
Rivals,"  try  out  the  candidates  with  "She 
Stoops  to   Conquer."     If   "The   Impor- 


42         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

tance  of  Being  Earnest"  (inevitable  pro- 
duction by  amateurs!)  is  the  play,  candi- 
dates may  profitably  appear  in  passages 
from  some  other  of  the  Wilde  comedies. 
Thus  a  candidate's  general  ability  is  tested. 
The  man  who  can  play  "Tony  Lumpkin" 
can  probably  play  "Bob  Acres";  a  good 
"Mrs.  Malai^rop"  will  usually  satisfy  as 
"Mrs.  Hardcastle." 

The  field  of  candidates  being  reduced  by 
these  preliminary  trials,  one  has  the  pick 
left  to  comi^ete  for  places  in  the  real  pro- 
duction. 

Since  the  stage  manager  has  the  re- 
sponsibility for  the  production,  and,  better 
than  anybody  else,  knows  just  what  values 
he  wishes  to  secure, — knows  just  how  the 
play,  like  the  symphony  or  the  oj^era,  is 
going  to  be  conducted,  he  should  certainly 
have  a  vote  in  the  selection  of  the  cast. 
And  in  any  case,  the  board  of  judges 
should  not  exceed  three. 


Organization — TJie  Cast  43 

It  is  eagerly  hoped  that  the  competitive 
method  of  choosing  a  cast  will  extend  more 
and  more  among  amateurs.  That  it  ever 
will  be  adopted  depends  almost  entirely  on 
the  spirit  with  which  the  work  of  the  play 
is  taken  up.  If  only  amusement  and  a 
pleasant  fillij)  to  one's  vanity  are  sought, 
there  is  nothing  to  be  said.  One  clever 
woman,  two  or  three  pretty  ones,  a  couple 
of  patient  husbands  or  old  bachelors,  to- 
gether with  a  sprinkling  of  personable 
youths,  will  suffice  for  nearly  any  play — 
of  the  usual  amateur  sort.  They  will  all 
be  told  how  well  they  did,  and  how  funny 
it  was  when  they  forgot  their  lines.  They 
will  probably  wear  their  costumes  at  the 
supper  and  the  dancing  which  will  follow 
the  performance,  and  all  will  be  well.  But 
if  the  amateur  performers  are  really 
touched  with,  the  notion,  now  spreading, 
that  it  is  well  worth  while  to  make  their 
performance  approach  a  very  definite  and 


44         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

very  worthy  artistic  ideal,  they  will  be  will- 
ing to  put  aside  the  traditional  amateur 
eagerness  for  self  glorification  for  the  sake 
of  obtaining  a  result  really  good.  And 
any  method,  comj^etitive  trial  or  other, 
which  will  bring  out  native  talent,  and  will 
evidence  that  a  certain  actor  will  fill  a 
place  better  than  another,  contributes  to 
this  end  very  considerably. 

Obviously  desirable  of  establishment  in 
schools  and  colleges  which  make  anything 
of  their  dramatic  work,  the  competitive 
choosing  of  candidates  serves  even  better 
in  amateur  clubs.  By  checking  vanity, 
and  disi)elling  illusions,  it  will  either  dis- 
rupt the  club  altogether  or  make  it  all  the 
stronger. 

Lastly,  it  is  always  well  to  choose,  in  ad- 
dition to  the  regular  cast,  understudies  for 
all  the  principal  parts  in  the  play.  The 
understudies  should  be  present  at  all  re- 
hearsals, must  be  letter  perfect  in  their 


Organization — The  Script  45 

parts,  and  at  the  time  of  the  performance, 
ready  to  go  on  at  a  moment's  notice. 

THE    SCRIPT 

The  script  is  the  name  given  to  the 
manuscript  or  printed  version  of  the  play, 
as  used  in  rehearsal  and  all  through  the 
work  of  preparation.  Little  attention  is 
usually  given  to  the  manner  of  preparing 
it  for  the  use  of  amateurs,  so  a  word  or  two 
of  caution  regarding  it  may  not  be  amiss 
in  any  consideration  of  the  effective  and 
economical  ways  of  staging  an  amateur 
production. 

There  are  two  ways  prevalent  of  pre- 
paring the  text  of  a  play  for  the  use  of 
members  of  the  cast.  Ancient  amateur 
precedent  leads  one  to  purchase  a  complete 
text  for  each  actor, — and  this  is  the  wrong 
way.  An  equally  venerable  custom  (of 
the  professional  stage)  limits  the  pos- 
session of  the  complete  text  to  the  stage 


46         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

manager ;  it  presents  to  each  actor  nothing 
but  a  copy  of  his  lines  and  cues  together 
with  enough  "business,"  as  shown  in  stage 
directions,  to  show  him  his  successive  posi- 
tions on  the  stage,  exits  and  entrances. 

The  latter  method  is  the  one  which  al- 
ways should  be  employed.  With  only  his 
lines  to  study  and  read,  the  actor  is  not 
distracted;  he  can  form  no  independent 
(and  possibly  mutinous)  notions  about 
how  the  play  should  be  conducted  as  a 
whole.  For  a  while,  until  probably  the 
third  or  fourth  rehearsal,  he  will  not  even 
understand  how  his  part  in  a  scene  or  a 
picture  is  related  to  the  other  parts.  His 
condition  is  very  like  that  of  the  musician 
in  some  concerted  piece.  His  score  con- 
tains only  his  own  music.  For  so  many 
bars  he  is  told  to  play ;  then  he  is  bidden  to 
rest  for  a  certain  number  of  bars.  What 
the  other  instruments  are  doing  is  not  his 
affair  at  all.     If  he  works  in  a  kind  of  igno- 


Organization — The  Script         47 

ranee,  at  the  same  time  he  is  never  con- 
fused. It  is  also  far  easier  to  memorize 
an  acting  part  thus  prepared. 

Another  advantage  which  this  method 
of  preparing  the  text  presents,  resides  in 
the  fact  that  it  gives  a  free  hand  and  a 
clear  start  to  the  stage  manager.  If  he 
alone  knows  the  composition  of  the  various 
scenes,  the  relations  of  the  characters,  the 
values  all  the  way  through  the  play,  he 
can  move  his  actors  from  the  very  begin- 
ning like  so  many  puppets.  He  will  be 
unhampered  by  suggestion,  criticism,  or 
dissent.  From  the  very  outset,  he  can  re- 
hearse intelligently  and  with  swift  direct- 
ness of  purpose. 

It  can  be  argued,  of  course,  that  read- 
ing all  the  text  gives  a  so  much  clearer  view 
to  the  actors  of  what  the  play  is  all  about. 
"It's  so  stupid,  having  only  my  own  lines" ; 
"I  feel  so  silly  at  rehearsal,  not  knowing  at 
all  what  the  others   are   going  to   do." 


48         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

These  wails  are  familiar  enough.  But  is 
it  not  enough  to  say,  in  rebuttal,  that  the 
best  professional  usage  gives  the  whole 
text  to  tlie  manager  alone?  Suppose  all 
the  players  in  a  symphony  orchestra  had 
the  complete  orchestral  score  to  study  their 
parts  from!  It  is  just  as  absurd  for  every 
actor  in  a  play  to  have  the  complete  text 
before  him. 

The  director,  as  he  studies  the  text  of 
the  play,  and  during  the  unfolding  process 
incident  to  rehearsal,  will  write  out  for  his 
own  guidance  every  scrap  of  business  for 
every  character ;  clear  diagrams  of  the  suc- 
cessive tableaux;  full  directions  as  to  the 
manner  of  reading  speeches;  every  detail 
of  tone  or  action,  which  will  help  him  to 
arrange  each  step  of  the  production  ef- 
fectively. Let  him  remember  that  the 
action  of  the  play  is  fully  as  important  in 
developing  its  dramatic  and  picturesque 
significance  as  the  words  of  the  characters ; 


Organization — The  Script         49 

the  action  is  to  the  text  what  the  orchestral 
parts  of  an  opera  are  to  the  Hbretto.  And 
the  stage  manager,  hke  his  brother  the 
musical  conductor,  must  have  before  him 
an  absolutely  complete  "score." 

When  all  these  annotations  are  made,  or 
even  at  the  beginning  of  rehearsals,  have 
the  text  typewritten  with  double  spaces  be- 
tween each  speech,  and  single  spaces  be- 
tween the  lines  of  each  speech,  with  the 
names  of  the  characters  in  any  given  scene 
printed  in  the  middle  of  the  page  (instead 
of  at  the  left  hand  margin) .  If  possible, 
use  a  bichrome  ribbon;  one  color  for  the 
text,  another  color  for  the  stage  directions ; 
or,  if  only  one  color  ink  is  used,  all  stage 
directions  must  be  underscored  in  red. 
Stage  directions  which  have  to  do  with 
general  movements,  exits  and  entrances, 
important  changes  of  position,  and  all  sig- 
nificant bits  of  business,  together  with  clear 
indications  of  the  tem-po  of  every  scene. 


50         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

should  be  written  on  the  right  side  of  the 
jDage  only,  in  columns  or  blocks  half  a  page 
wide.  Directions  for  individual  charac- 
ters, like  those  for  a  certain  inflection  for  a 
certain  speech,  or  for  less  imi)ortant  bits 
of  business  affecting  only  single  indi- 
viduals, should  be  written  integrally  (in 
parentheses  and  contrasting  color)  with 
the  speech  they  accompany.  Leave  ample 
margins  on  the  tyx)ewritten  page  for  the 
changes  in  business  which  the  experience 
of  rehearsals  will  inevitably  suggest.  For 
the  sake  of  easy  handling  and  reference,  it 
is  best  to  have  each  act  of  the  typewritten 
text  bound  up  separately. 

For  convenient  study  and  handling,  the 
parts  as  prepared  for  the  actors  are  type- 
written on  sheets  half  the  ordinary  type- 
writer size,  and  stoutly  bound.  The  cues 
are  written  on  the  right  side  of  the  page, 
and  consist  of  as  much  as  four  words ;  the 
stage  directions  are  printed  in  connection 


Organization — Rehearsals  51 

with  the  speeches  as  in  the  full  sized  text. 
All  this  takes  a  little  time,  and  perhaps 
entails  for  a  full  sized  play  a  cost  of  twenty 
dollars  at  ordinary  rates.  But  the  ex- 
pense is  more  than  compensated  by  the 
ease  and  speed  with  which  the  whole  mat- 
ter of  study  and  rehearsal  is  helped  along. 

REHEARSALS 

One  further  jDoint  to  be  considered  in 
connection  with  the  work  of  preparing  for 
the  production  of  an  amateur  play,  so  far 
as  organization  is  concerned,  is  that  of  ar- 
ranging for  rehearsals. 

Perhai)s  the  commonest  source  of  weak- 
ness in  amateur  productions,  other  than 
unintelligent  training  or  lack  of  talent,  lies 
in  the  manner  in  which  rehearsals  are 
planned  and  conducted.  Many  a  play 
fails,  after  a  tremendous  amount  of  en- 
ergy, good  will,  time,  and  money  have 
been  spent  in  preparation,  merely  because 


52         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

those  in  charge  have  been  ignorant  of,  or 
have  neglected,  two  or  tlii'ee  fundamental 
requirements,  of  a  simple  sort,  making  for 
good  discipline.  In  what  follow^s,  no  ex- 
cuse is  made  for  a  certain  dogmatic  atti- 
tude; no  apology  for  laying  down  rules 
and  regulations.  Less  than  what  is  here 
suggested  would  ensure  no  results  at  all^ 
save  those  which  luck  and  the  holy  angels 
grant  to  sinners.  Wherever  the  word 
"should"  appears,  the  reader  will  please 
supply  a  "must,"  as  better  conveying  the 
writer's  idea. 

Let  us  suppose  the  play  is  chosen,  the 
cast  selected,  and  the  date  of  production 
definitely  determined.  Then  the  stage 
manager  takes  command.  And  his  very 
first  duty  is  to  draw  up,  preferably  not  in 
consultation  with  his  actors,  a  schedule  of 
rehearsal  dates,  a  copy  of  which  is  handed 
to  each  member  of  the  company.  Let  the 
manager  announce,  when  first  the  actors 


Orga7iization — Rehearsals  53 

are  called  together,  that  the  days  and  hours 
selected  for  rehearsal  are  to  be  considered 
fixtures — engagements  to  which  he  and 
his  troupe  are  definitely  committed.  He 
should  say  that  he  expects  all  other  en- 
gagements for  the  ensuing  week  to  give 
way  to  rehearsals;  he  should  assume  from 
the  outset  that  everybody  in  the  play  has 
enough  interest  and  good  will  to  conform 
to  his  requirements.  Naturally,  the  man- 
ager will  use  both  sense  and  tact  in  pre- 
paring his  schedule;  rehearsals  must  not 
be  made  to  appear  a  burden  and  a  bore 
from  the  start.  Let  him  find  out  quietly 
how  his  company  is  situated  as  to  their 
other  fixed  weekly  engagements,  whether 
business  or  social.  If  possible  he  should 
avoid  conflict  with  social  events  to  which 
many  of  his  troupe  are  invited  or  hope  to 
be.  It  is  safe  to  assume  that  the  work  and 
fun  of  preparing  the  play  will  not  appeal 
to  all  his  actors  with  equal  force.     So  he 


54         Amateur'  Stage  Directing 

may  settle  his  rehearsal  periods  as  not  to 
make  them  onerous  to  anybody. 

But  it  must  be  made  perfectly  clear  that 
rehearsals  are  engagements  which  must  he 
kept.  There  must  be  no  leeway  for  the 
shirker;  good  and  conscientious  workers 
must  not  be  hampered  by  the  absence  or 
tardiness  of  others. 

It  is  probably  impossible,  in  the  average 
amateur  club  or  even  at  a  school,  to  pro- 
vide any  acceptable  penalty  for  absence 
or  slackness  in  the  matter  of  rehearsals. 
The  rigid  system  of  fines  charged  against 
the  salaries  of  professionals  who  absent 
themselves  without  the  very  best  excuses, 
will  not  of  course  apply  to  amateur  com- 
panies; and  such  penalties  as  being 
dropped  from  the  cast,  and  the  like,  usu- 
ally defeat  their  own  ends.  It  is  far  bet- 
ter, and  perfectly  possible  in  any  gi'oup  of 
amateurs,  to  cultivate  an  esprit  de  corps 
which  makes  it  the  right  and  reasonable 


Orgariization — Rehearsals  55 

thing  for  the  actor  always  to  be  present. 
Let  it  be  made  clear  that  absences  make 
effective  rehearsals  impossible ;  let  there  be 
cultivated  a  real  desire  never  to  miss,  both 
for  the  sake  of  the  production,  which  all 
want  to  make  as  good  as  possible,  and  for 
the  sake  of  the  fun  which  any  tactful  di- 
rector can  get  out  of  the  dryest  rehearsal, 
if  he  keeps  his  wits  about  him. 

While  it  is  quite  impossible  to  lay  down 
hard  and  fast  rules  as  to  the  period  of 
time  necessary  to  rehearse  an  amateur 
play,  certain  general  notions  as  to  this 
point  may  be  suggested.  Wliere  talents 
and  experience  vary  indefinitely;  where 
ideals  of  the  perfection  to  be  attained 
range  all  the  way  from  those  of  the  mana- 
ger and  cast  who  seriously  attempt  a  pro- 
duction and  performance  as  close  to  the 
professional  as  possible,  to  those  which  are 
contented  and  attained  when  the  prompt- 
er's voice  is  not  too  often  heard  and  the 


56         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

girls  look  pretty  in  their  costumes,  nobody 
can  say  that  two  weeks  is  enough  or  two 
months  insufficient.  But  it  may  safely  be 
said  that  amateurs,  except  the  very 
crudest,  appear  to  accomplish  satisfactory 
results  most  often,  other  things  being 
equal,  when  rehearsals  do  not  extend  over 
a  period  exceeding  six  weeks.  A  longer 
stretch  of  preparation  is  apt  to  result  in 
flagging  interest,  desultory  attendance, 
and  encourages  the  feeling  from  the  start 
that  when  "the  play"  is  so  far  distant, 
"there  is  plenty  of  time."  One  inclines  to 
the  behef  that  one  month  is  better  than 
two.  Another  set  of  reasons  for  an  ap- 
parently short  period  of  rehearsal  is  based 
on  the  fact  that  average  amateurs  can  be 
trained  to  secure  only  a  limited  number 
of  effects,  can  realize  only  a  limited  num- 
ber of  "values."  Thoroughly  grounded 
professional  actors  need,  paradoxically,  al- 
most more  rehearsal  than  amateurs ;  when 


Organization — Rehearsals         57 

it  is  a  question  of  attaining  the  utmost 
perfection  of  stage  effect,  of  expressing 
every  slightest  nuance  of  meaning  or 
picturesque  quahty,  there  can  be  hardly 
too  much  practice.  But  with  amateurs 
one  can  plan  to  accomplish  only  a  few 
things.  One  may  do  these  things  very 
surprisingly  well,  it  is  true.  But  to  learn 
them  is  a  matter  of  a  comparatively  short 
time. 

What  must  be  carefully  observed,  how- 
ever, in  the  matter  of  planning  rehearsals, 
and  the  time  they  are  to  consume,  is  that 
once  begun,  rehearsals  must  come  very, 
frequently.  It  will  not  do  to  meet  casu- 
ally once  a  week  for  a  while,  and  then 
scramble  feverishly  on  the  eve  of  the  pro- 
duction. Rehearsals  should  never  occur 
less  often  than  three  times  a  week.  Dur- 
ing the  week  immediately  preceding  the 
public  performance,  they  must  be  held 
every  day. 


58        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

Furthermore,  rehearsals  must  be  long  to 
the  point  of  weariness,  and  a  little  past  it. 
A  period  shorter  than  two  full  hours  must 
never  be  allowed,  with  work  going  every 
second  of  the  time.  The  afternoon  re- 
hearsal which  is  interrupted  for  tea  at  five, 
the  evening  rehearsal  at  which  the  hostess 
appears  smilingly  and  casually  to  inquire 
if  the  actors  "aren't  ready  to  come  into  the 
dining  room,"  are  taboo.  Rehearsals 
must  mean  unflagging  hard  work. 

STUDY 

Another  point  to  be  insisted  on  in  the 
early  stages  of  organizing  a  good  amateur 
play  relates  to  intelligent  study.  Before 
and  during  the  progress  of  rehearsals,  both 
Stage  Manager  and  actors  must  make 
every  effort  to  reahze  and  understand  the 
period,  setting,  and  circumstances,  in 
which  the  story  of  the  play  is  laid.  Fre- 
quently disregarded  on  the  American  pro- 


Organization — Study  59 

fessional  stage,  the  milieu,  or  environment 
and  color,  of  the  play  should  be  a  matter 
of  painstaking  study  by  the  amateur 
player  and  producer. 

This  is  not  limited  merely  to  an  attempt 
at  correct  costuming  and  setting.  A  com- 
plete realization  of  the  spirit  of  the  play 
will  affect  the  carriage  and  speech  of  the 
actors.  How  often  do  we  hear  Lydia 
Languish  speak  in  the  accent  of  Broad- 
way or  of  the  Lake  Shore  Drive!  How 
often  does  a  soldier  of  the  Empire  carry 
himself  like  a  bank  clerk  going  to 
luncheon! 

Look  at  the  portraits,  the  pictures  of 
domestic  life,  of  the  period  and  country  in 
which  your  play  is  laid.  Every  public 
library,  gallery,  and  museum  can  help  you. 
Get  in  mind  how  the  peoj)le  looked.  Un- 
derstand clearly  the  characteristics  of  the 
rancher's  shack,  the  Puritan  dwelhng,  the 
Bronx  apartment,  the  business  office,  the 


60        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

palace,  the  typical  air  and  manner  of  their 
inhabitants.  JNIake  every  member  of  the 
cast  appreciate  and  faithfully  mimic  (as 
best  he  can)  the  tone  and  gait  of  the  type 
of  character  he  is  to  present.  One  must 
not  be  content  merely  to  let  the  people  in 
the  play  be  themselves — they  must  get  out 
of  themselves.  They  must  not  speak  the 
language  of  the  play's  period  and  place 
merely  by  rote;  they  must  not  dress  in 
mere  approximations  of  the  correct  cos- 
tume. Let  the  performance  reproduce  a 
bit  of  vivid  life;  let  it  catch  the  spirit  of 
the  life  it  undertakes  to  reproduce.  Too 
high  an  ideal?  Hardly,  if  amateur  acting 
and  producing  is  to  be  made  at  all  worth 
while. 

It  is  along  this  line  that  the  educational 
value  of  studying  a  play  and  acting  it  be- 
comes very  evident.  This  matter  of  study, 
both  of  text  and  of  character  and  of  set- 
ting,   may   be    elaborated    as    far    as    is 


Organization — Study  61 

thought  wise.  Schools  jump  at  the  op- 
portunity. But  it  is  well  to  remember 
that  a  great  deal  of  absurd  effort  is  ex- 
pended on  this  cultural  aspect  of  the  busi- 
ness. One  remembers  to  have  seen  a  rec- 
ommendation to  the  effect  that,  preceding 
the  production  of  a  play  of  literary  value 
or  interest,  somebody  shall  precede  the 
performance  with  a  brief  lecture  on  the 
play's  content  and  place  in  literary  his- 
tory I  The  recommendation  to  intelligent 
study  here  set  down  has  for  its  object 
merely  a  better  performance — which  ap- 
pears, after  all,  the  main  business  in  hand. 


IV 

REHEARSING 
THE   DIVISION    OF   THE   TEXT 

The  play  is  selected,  the  cast  chosen, 
the  first  rehearsal  is  called,  and  the  work 
of  the  stage  manager  starts  with  a  rush. 
From  this  moment,  the  actors  will  look  to 
him  for  direction  at  every  point;  he  alone 
must  solve  all  difficulties.  Tactfully  and 
unobtrusively,  but  very  positively,  he  is  to 
keep  the  reins  in  his  own  hands.  Even  if 
he  makes  a  mistake,  he  should  not  correct 
it  till  he  is  quite  ready.  Experience  abun- 
dantly proves  that  it  is  better  to  follow 
out  even  a  quite  wrong  conception  of  a 
scene's  value  and  purport  than  to  vacillate 
between  two  or  three  ways  of  reading  it. 
Uncertainty  on  the  part  of  the  manager 

62 


Rehearsing — The  Teoot  63 

will  result  very  swiftly  in  a  loss  of  all  con- 
fidence by  the  actors,  both  in  the  manager 
and  in  themselves.  But  confidence  has 
been  and  won  and  kept  before  now  by 
even  the  tone  and  manner  of  authority. 

How  proceed  effectively  then  toward 
the  fulfillment  of  the  manager's  really 
complex  task,  as  this  will  present  itself 
during  the  progress  of  rehearsals  ? 

In  the  first  place — and  it  may  aj)pear 
superfluous  to  ask  this  till  one  gets  to 
know  the  run  of  amateur  managers — he 
must  study  the  play  with  genuine  care  and 
thoroughness.  He  must  know  the  play 
better  than  any  of  his  actors.  He  must 
come  to  every  rehearsal  with  a  well 
planned  campaign  in  mind;  he  must  be 
prepared,  from  real  intimacy  with  the 
play,  to  explain  unhesitatingly  any  point, 
as  he  understands  it,  on  which  a  question 
may  be  raised.  The  actors  have  only  their 
bare  parts;  the  Stage  Manager  has  the 


64         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

whole  text ;  and  the  gi-eat  advantage  which 
this  arrangement  gives  him,  he  should 
maintain  carefully.  And  this  he  can  ac- 
complish only  by  a  study  which,  before  re- 
hearsals have  progressed  far,  will  make 
him  quite  competent  to  recount  if  not  to 
act  each  of  the  various  parts. 

For  the  purpose  of  really  intelligent 
study  and  rehearsal,  it  will  be  found  neces- 
sary to  divide  the  text  of  the  play  into 
its  various  component  parts.  Before  re- 
hearsals begin,  have  clearly  in  mind  what, 
dramatically,  are  the  important  moments. 
The  habit  of  the  French  dramatists,  who 
compose  a  new  scene  on  the  basis  of  the 
entrance  of  any  important  character,  gives 
us  a  good  example  of  division,  which  we 
shall  do  well  to  follow  out  to  its  logical 
end.  Not  only  do  we  not  study  each  act 
as  a  whole — a  very  common  amateur  fault ; 
not  only  do  we  refuse  to  consider  each 
scene  (for  the  moment)  as  a  unit;  but  we 


Rehearsing — "Values"  65 

accurately  mark  off  by  itself  every  epi- 
sode, incident,  speech  or  gesture,  which  de- 
cisively helps  to  advance  the  plot,  depicts 
character,  or  affords  opportunity  for  de- 
velopment as  a  beautiful  stage  picture. 
Every  entrance  and  exit,  every  encoun- 
ter of  principal  characters;  individual 
speeches;  bits  of  action  of  all  sorts  which 
have  color  and  interest, — as  minute  inci- 
dents as  any  of  these,  all  through  each  act 
of  the  play,  must  be  treated  as  separate 
problems  and  studied  each  for  its  own 
sake.     This  is  vitally  important. 


"values" 


Only  in  this  way,  by  careful  dissection 
and  separate  study,  will  it  be  possible  to 
discover  what  are  technically  called  the 
play's  "values."  These,  in  translation,  are 
the  scores  of  opportunities  for  expressive 
acting,  for  artistic  grouping,  for  realizing 
the    full   meaning   and   measure    of   the 


66         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

author's  material.  It  is  partly  due  to  the 
amateur's  habit  of  rehearsing  great 
stretches  of  the  play  at  a  time  that  he 
passes  heedlessly  over  "values"  which  the 
professional  would  welcome  and  make 
much  of.  And  while  it  is  impossible  for 
the  amateur,  with  his  scanty  technical 
equipment,  to  realize  all  that  is  presented 
to  him,  he  must  take  care  at  least  to  get 
out  as  many  of  these  "values"  as  he  pos- 
sibly can.  And  it  is  one  of  the  early  tasks 
of  the  stage  manager  to  see  these  varied 
possibilities,  of  whatever  character,  and  in- 
dicate them  to  his  company.  He  must 
make  his  actors  perceive  that  to  read  a 
line,  make  an  entrance,  leave  the  stage, 
hand  a  letter,  or  play  any  single  bit  of 
action,  in  a  given  way,  is  better  than  to  do 
it  otherwise.  Better,  because  it  will  reveal 
more  vividly  the  emotion  or  feeling  under- 
lying the  action;  better  because  it  is  fun- 


Rehearsing — ''Values'^  67 

nier;  better  because  it  is  richer  and  fuller; 
better  because  it  expresses  the  fullness  of 
the  "value." 

Until  the  j)layers  clearly  apprehend 
each  "value"  as  the  latter  presents  itself, 
and  begin  to  express  it,  the  prudent  man- 
ager will  not  advance  his  rehearsal  a  peg. 
Make  the  heroine  take  an  entrance  twenty 
times,  if  necessary,  "till  she  gets  it  right," 
— till  she  expresses,  that  is,  the  dramatic 
value  and  point  of  her  appearance.  Re- 
hearse an  inch  at  a  time.  It  will  not  prove 
tedious,  if  properly  managed.  There  is  a 
lot  of  fun,  for  a  really  worth  while  com- 
l^any,  in  finding  and  expressing  "values" 
in  unsuspected  places.  A  shght  change 
of  inflection  in  reading  a  speech,  a  chance 
handling  of  some  object  lying  on  a  table, 
may  open  up  whole  ranges  of  interesting 
possibilities  for  better  and  richer  interpre- 
tation of  the  play. 


68        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

EMPHASIS 

It  will  be  apparent  enough,  on  study, 
that  the  action  of  each  of  the  little  subdi- 
visions of  the  play  is  built  around  some 
central  happening — a  sj^eech,  the  handling 
of  a  weapon,  a  fan,  a  letter,  perhaps  upon 
a  single  gesture  or  an  attitude.  In  a 
single  instant  of  time  perha]3S,  or  in  a  very 
brief  bit  of  movement  or  speech,  resides 
the  whole  point  of  the  incident ;  and  to  this 
focus  of  interest  the  attention  of  the  audi- 
ence must  be  drawn  and  there  fixed. 
These  succeeding  moments  must  be  played 
with  emphasis;  they  must  be  given  the 
most  vivid  depiction  possible. 

Given  good  actors,  one  would  fancy  that 
this  particular  problem  would  be  solved  in 
advance.  To  make  a  point  tell  would  ap- 
pear to  be  wholly  the  task  of  the  players, 
not  at  all  that  of  the  stage  manager.  But 
the  experience  of  even  the  professional 


Rehearsing — Emphasis  69 

stage  testifies  that  this  vastly  important 
work  of  expressing  "values"  depends,  for 
its  successful  accomplishment,  not  wholly 
on  the  skill  of  the  actor,  but  in  a  great  de- 
gree on  the  manner  in  which  the  actors 
are  disposed  and  moved  on  the  stage. 
Not  how  they  stand  and  speak,  but  where 
they  stand  and  speak,  is  a  very  serious 
consideration ;  and  much  is  made  of  it  here, 
because  so  many  amateur  stage  managers 
are  careless  about  it. 

For  it  must  be  always  remembered  that, 
to  make  a  point  tell,  the  incident  must  be 
given  a  pronounced  physical  relief.  It 
must  have  the  emphasis  derived  from  be- 
ing conspicuous.  The  audience  must  hear 
and  see  it.  Whatever  else  the  stage  may 
hold  of  interest  at  that  moment  must  be 
distinctly  subordinated  to  the  emphatic 
and  vivid  presentation  of  the  really  impor- 
tant action. 

The  traditional,  and  usually  most  ef- 


70        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

fective  way  of  securing  this  actual  phys- 
ical relief,  so  very  necessary,  is  to  give  the 
actors  playing  the  incident  a  marked  meas- 
ure of  isolation  on  the  stage.  Separate 
them  from  the  others.  Do  not  be  afraid 
of  giving  them  a  stronger  illumination 
than  the  other  less  important  actors  re- 
ceive, for  the  moment.  Let  them  play 
their  "bit,"  as  it  were,  all  by  themselves. 
Deliberately  withdraw  other  actors  from 
their  immediate  neighborhood,  by  sending 
them  upstage  or  into  corners,  if  necessary. 
The  attention  of  the  audience  must  be 
f  ocussed  and  held  on  one  single  point ;  and 
to  this  end  let  the  actors  carrying  the  scene 
be  made  physically  conspicuous  by  every 
means.  One  must  not  forget,  of  course, 
that  the  arrangement  of  the  characters  in 
any  stage  picture  requires  a  pretty  con- 
stant balance ;  no  part  or  side  of  the  stage 
should  remain  unj^eopled  altogether, 
broadly     speaking.     Indeed     there     are 


Rehearsifig — Emphasis  71 

many  times  when  the  stage  will  be 
"dressed"  as  symmetrically,  almost,  as  the 
compositions  of  the  old  religious  painters. 
But  it  is  also  true  that  this  desirable  bal- 
ance is  not  always  one  of  masses.  It  de- 
pends also  on  interest  and  significance;  a 
single  important  character  doing  some- 
thing important  is  actually  weightier  and 
larger,  if  one  may  use  the  expression,  than 
a  whole  crowd  of  unimportant  persons. 
And  so,  it  is  perfectly  proper,  if  you  wish 
to  emphasize  the  action  of  one  or  two  im- 
portant characters  at  any  given  moment, 
to  set  them  quite  by  themselves  on  one 
side  of  the  stage,  filling  the  other  with 
twenty  lesser  personages,  if  need  be.  A 
hero  facing  a  mob;  Shy  lock  in  the  court 
scene;  Hamlet  addressing  the  players; 
many  another  scene  of  like  sort  recurs  to 
the  memory  as  illustrating  the  truth  that 
a  principal  character,  at  any  important 
moment,  may  and  should  be  given  all 


72         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

needful  isolation,  with  no  fear  of  disturb- 
ing the  general  balance  of  the  picture. 
On  making  important  entrances  and  exits, 
this  physical  relief,  through  isolation,  is 
carefully  to  be  sought  and  arranged  for. 
Here,  and  indeed  in  general,  for  this  pur- 
pose of  making  certain  persons  conspicu- 
ous, the  triangle  is  accepted  as  suggesting 
the  best  arrangement  in  which  to  group  the 
various  actors.  The  apex  of  the  triangle 
is  the  focus  of  interest.  To  this  one  focus 
all  the  lines  of  the  stage  are  made  to  lead. 

Necessary  emphasis  through  physical 
relief  is  also  secured  by  playing  all  impor- 
tant incidents  in  the  foreground  of  the  pic- 
ture. Occasionally  the  exigencies  of  the 
story  will  make  it  inevitable  that  a  place 
somewhat  less  conspicuous  be  chosen ;  but, 
whenever  possible,  stage  all  important 
action  well  down,  on  that  third  of  the 
stage  which  is  nearest  the  footlights. 
Whenever     possible,     moreover,     choose 


Rehearsing — Movement  73 

places  somewhat  to  the  right  or  left  of  the 
center  of  the  stage  (at  R.  C.  or  L.  C.  in 
stage  parlance).  If  two  uicidents  of 
equal  interest  and  closely  connected  in 
theme  occur  within  the  limits  of  the  same 
act,  play  one  at  R.  C,  and  the  other  at  L. 
C,  for  the  sake  of  proper  variety,  and, 
also,  that  both  sides  of  "the  house"  shall 
have  an  opportunity  to  see  directly  in  front 
of  it  one  incident  or  the  other.  Amateurs, 
if  left  to  themselves,  are  apt  to  play  too  far 
back  on  the  stage.  Bring  them  down  and 
keep  them  there,  especially  when  they  have 
anything  important  to  say  or  do. 

MOVEMENT 

With  the  play  divided  up  into  a  series 
of  incidents,  of  dramatic  moments,  it  will 
be  seen  that  the  movements  of  the  actors 
about  the  stage  amount  to  nothing  more 
than  movement  from  one  tableau  or  stage 
picture  to  another.     And  the  sooner  this 


74        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

fact  is  made  apparent  to  the  amateur  com- 
pany and  heartily  accepted  as  furnishing 
the  reason  for  crossing,  going  up,  and 
coming  down,  the  better.  Hamlet,  say, 
makes  his  first  entrance  in  the  train  of  the 
king  and  queen.  This  is  one  incident, 
staged,  prepared,  rehearsed  as  a  separate, 
single  episode.  The  royal  pair  mount  the 
throne,  Hamlet  proceeds  to  his  seat  oppo- 
site them.  This  is  another  incident.  A 
few  seconds  later,  he  is  listening  to  the  hol- 
low and  23ompous  address  of  his  mother's 
guilty  consort, — a  third  incident.  And 
the  actors  are  drilled  first  into  such  a  dis- 
position as  will  make  Hamlet's  entrance 
effective;  next  they  are  moved  to  furnish 
a  background  and  setting  for  the  princi- 
pals as  they  take  their  respective  places; 
finally  they  move  into  a  formation  proper 
for  the  third  of  these  three  typical  mo- 
ments of  rapidly  changing  action.  All  the 
people  on  the  stage,  from  the  star  down 


Rehearsing — 3Iovement  75 

to  the  meanest  courtier  of  Elsinore,  make 
no  change  or  movement  save  those  re- 
qmred  by  the  exigencies  of  the  play's 
action;  the  stage  is  dressed  at  every  in- 
stant to  give  the  important  people  and  the 
important  action  the  necessary  phj^sical  re- 
lief, and  to  present  a  composition  which 
is  pleasing  and  effective  on  the  picturesque 
side.  In  the  carefully  written  texts  of 
the  modern  playwright,  and  always  in  the 
script  of  the  good  stage  manager,  the  posi- 
tions of  all  principal  actors  are  clearly  pre- 
scribed for  every  moment  they  are  on  the 
stage;  and,  on  study,  it  will  be  seen  that 
they  move  only  for  reasons  sx)ringing  from 
the  necessities  of  the  plot. 

The  amateur  stage  manager  will  find  it 
a  great  help  if  he  directs  his  actors  in  their 
movement  solely  on  this  basis.  The  tend- 
ency of  all  amateur  actors  is  toward  rest- 
lessness. They  feel,  if  they  stand  still, 
that  they  appear  stiff  and  wooden;  they 


76         Amateur  Stage  Directmg 

fear  that  the  scene  lacks  animation.  And 
this  is  a  tendency  to  be  corrected  and  a 
fear  to  be  allayed,  very  early  in  the  game. 
Not  a  step  is  to  be  taken  on  the  stage 
which  is  not  required  by  the  action  of  the 
play.  INIake  your  people  learn  to  keep 
still.  An  aimless  change  of  position,  even 
an  alteration  in  the  general  poise  and  pose 
of  the  body,  will  definitely  injure,  by  blur- 
ring, the  sharp  impression  every  instant  of 
the  play  must  make  on  the  audience. 
Make  the  actors  keep  their  hands  down, 
their  feet  from  shuffling;  do  not  let  them 
sit  down  or  stand  up  save  for  some  reason 
in  the  play.  Rej^ose  must  be  the  object 
sought, — this  and  the  elimination  of  all 
needless  movement  of  all  sorts.  The  ef- 
fect of  this  will  be  that  when  an  actor  does 
change  his  pose,  or  cross  the  stage,  his 
action  becomes  significant ;  there  is  defini- 
tion and  crispness  in  his  playing;  his  action 
takes  on  a  proj^er  emphasis.     The  ama- 


Rehearsing — Movement  77 

teur's  native  nervousness  will  make  the 
enforcement  of  this  rule  extremely  diffi- 
cult ;  but  the  stage  manager  must  insist  on 
it  from  the  start.  Remember  that  it  is  far 
better  to  appear  wooden  than  woolly. 

There  is  one  good  way  of  correcting  this 
fault  of  nervous  indecision  and  restless- 
ness, the  results  of  which  are  so  uniformly 
fatal.  When  a  certain  disposition  of  the 
characters  in  any  scene  has  been  found 
after  repeated  experiments  and  rehearsal, 
to  satisfy  all  the  requirements  of  emphasis, 
picturesqueness  and  the  play's  story,  com- 
pel the  actors  to  assume  exactly  the  places 
assigned  them,  every  time  they  rehearse. 
Settle  the  matter  as  early  as  possible;  do 
not  attempt  too  many  refinements  and 
slight  changes  of  formation  (which  will 
merely  confuse)  ;  and  then  have  your  com- 
pany repeat  and  repeat  not  only  the 
speeches  but  also  every  detail  of  the  action 
and  movement  without  an  inch  or  shadow 


78         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

of  variation.  Their  positions  on  the  stage, 
their  individual  poses,  the  intonation  of 
their  lines,  must  come  to  be  taken  auto- 
matically. They  must  get  so  used  to  do- 
ing and  saying  things  in  only  one  way  that 
any  suggested  change  will  dismay  and 
shock  them.  To  venture  a  paradox,  one 
rehearses  a  company  into  acting  intelli- 
gently only  by  rehearsing  them  to  move 
mechanically.  Secondly,  as  a  further 
guard  against  uncertainty  of  movement, 
not  only  must  the  actors  get  this  idea  of 
never  varying  their  play  at  any  given  mo- 
ment; but  they  should  be  compelled  al- 
ways to  move  across  the  stage,  whenever 
thej^  do  move,  in  exactly  one  way,  by  a 
never  changing  route,  in  a  uniform  lapse 
of  time,  even,  if  possible,  by  the  same  num- 
ber of  steps.  Experiment  will  show  how 
best  to  effect  the  change;  and  when  once 
any  best  method  is  adopted,  do  not  vary  it 
by  a  hair's  breadth.     The  doing  of  the 


Rehearsing — Time  and  Rhythm      79 

thing  thus  and  so  must  become  instinctive. 
Precision  is  the  aim,  clear  outHnes,  bold 
color.  And  these  ends  can  be  gained  only 
by  a  repetition,  which  is  perfectly  mechan- 
ical. Improvisation,  individual  depar- 
tures from  what  is  adopted  as  the  under- 
stood "business"  of  any  bit  of  action, 
should  be,  for  amateurs,  as  much  out  of  the 
question  as  individual  initiative  on  the  part 
of  the  soldier  in  a  parade  formation. 

TIME   AND   RHYTHM 

If  you  have  had  the  opportunity  of 
watching  a  really  first  class  stage  manager 
at  rehearsal,  it  may  be  that  you  have  won- 
dered at  his  listening  to  the  actors,  as  they 
go  through  a  scene,  with  his  eyes  closed, 
or  with  his  back  turned  to  the  stage. 
Again  you  will  notice,  probably  with  a  bit 
of  surprise,  that  very  frequently  the  man- 
ager will  beat  out  a  kind  of  marching 
rhythm — clapping  his  hands  together,  or. 


80         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

more  likely,  using  as  a  baton  his  tattered, 
dog's  eared  copy  of  the  script.  And  if 
you  interrupt  that  manager  during  either 
of  these  two  phases  of  his  madness,  you  are 
courting  instant  and  violent  death.  Break 
in  on  him  at  any  other  time, — when  he  is 
laboring  with  an  actor  to  speak  louder,  or 
when  he  is  insisting  that  the  electrician 
shall  supply  some  hghting  effect  which  the 
latter  swears  the  switchboard  will  not 
carry,  for  instance — and  the  manager  will 
probably  answer  you,  for  he  lives  by  and 
in  spite  of  all  interruptions.  But  when, 
with  every  nerve  taut,  he  is  listening  to  the 
reading  of  a  scene  for  the  purpose  of  ex- 
actly fixing  its  time,  or  is  whacking  out 
"one — two — three — four,"  in  order  to  get 
his  actors  into  the  rhytlnn  of  the  scene, 
keep  away  from  him.  He  is  dangerous. 
He  is  trying  to  accomplish  that  which 
many  would  call  his  most  delicate  and  diffi- 
cult task.     For,  if  that  manager  knows 


Rehearsing — Time  and  Rhythm      81 

anything,  he  knows  that  every  subdivision 
of  the  play,  act,  or  scene,  must  be  taken  at 
a  certain  pace,  time,  and  cadence,  which  is 
constantly  changing — now  quickened,  now 
retarded,  but  always  appropriate.  And 
to  make  even  the  most  experienced  actors 
strike,  maintain,  and  deftly  change  the 
pace  deemed  right,  is  work  for  a  man  with 
all  his  wits  about  him,  his  most  sensitive 
perceptions  all  awake  and  on  tip-toe. 

But  it  is  work  that  must  be  done.  It  is 
work  often  neglected,  through  ignorance, 
by  amateurs.  The  audience  at  an  ama- 
teur play,  often  the  actors  themselves  as 
well,  will  feel  a  sense  of  oppressive  monot- 
ony in  the  way  the  play  is  being  done. 
They  will  try  to  relieve  this  by  varying 
their  tones,  the  pitch  of  their  voices,  their 
manner  of  playing;  they  will  fall  into  the 
habit  of  moving  about  merely  for  the  sake 
of  moving.  And  they  commit  many  sins 
for  the  sake,  as  they  hope,  of  offsetting  a 


82         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

deadly  one.  But  all  these  efforts  are  quite 
vain.  Variety,  and  the  charm  which  va- 
riety brings,  also  the  effect  of  really  in- 
telligent reading  and  interpretation,  is 
more  often  a  matter  of  varying  the  time 
and  rhythm  intelligently,  than  of  any  other 
device.  The  feeling  that  amateurs  are 
playing  a  scene  too  glibly,  or  too  slowly, 
is  always  traceable  to  the  fact  that  they 
have  chosen  the  wrong  pace,  the  wi'ong 
tempo,  as  stage  jargon  phrases  it. 

While  it  is  easy  enough  to  insist  that  this 
question  receive  the  most  careful  consider- 
ation, it  is  extremely  difficult  to  lay  down 
fixed  and  workable  rules  for  the  amateur 
manager  to  go  by.  There  will  be  con- 
siderable divergence  of  opinion  between 
equally  skillful  directors  as  to  the  proper 
speed  at  which  any  given  passage  shall  be 
taken.  What  obtains  in  the  sphere  of 
music  is  equally  true  on  the  stage ;  one  con- 
ductor will  read  an  orchestral  composition 


Rehearsing — Time  and  Rhythm      83 

at  quite  a  different  rate  of  speed  than  his 
brother  or  rival,  and  lacking  the  author  to 
judge  between  them,  who  shall  say  which 
has  the  best  interpretation?  Again, 
special  circumstances  may  intervene  to  de- 
termine the  manager  to  call  for  a  pace 
slower  or  quicker  than  usual.  But  if  we 
can  agree,  broadly  speaking,  that  the  char- 
acter of  the  given  passage  determines  the 
pace  at  which  it  shall  be  played,  we  are 
on  fairly  safe  ground.  We  may  also 
agree  on  some  other  generalizations. 
Thus,  it  is  reasonable  to  say  that  scenes 
which  tell  the  play's  story,  which  depict  a 
crisis  of  character,  which  are  full  of  sus- 
pense either  humorous  or  deeply  stirring, 
shall  always  be  taken  slowly.  Scenes 
which  are  obviously  intended  by  the  play- 
wright, or  seized  by  the  actor,  as  oppor- 
tunities for  extended  individual  character 
drawing,  should  also  proceed  slowly.  Re- 
call, for  instance,  the  deliberation  with 


84)         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

which  Jefferson  played  that  memorable 
passage,  a  classic  of  comedy  acting,  where 
as  Bob  Acres  he  prepared  himself  for  the 
duel.  Perhaps  there  is  no  need  to  specify 
here.  Does  not  every  manager  know 
from  manifold  experience  that,  once  you 
turn  an  actor  loose  on  the  stage  with  a 
good  "fat"  scene  to  play,  he  will  never 
leave  it  till  you  drive  or  drag  him  off? 
Love  scenes  also,  of  the  delicatelv  senti- 
mental  sort,  whether  tinged  with  humor 
or  with  some  richer  emotional  color,  come 
easily  into  the  list  of  leisurely  passages ;  so 
do  practically  all  scenes  of  tender  feeling, 
such  as  those  depicting  parental  affection, 
self-sacrifice,  leave  takings.  In  quicker 
time  are  scenes  of  bustle  and  confusion,  of 
busy  come  and  go  of  every  sort,  whenever 
the  stage  is  full  of  people,  when  "things 
are  happening"  every  instant.  Scenes 
made  up  of  sketchy  character  bits,  of  dis- 
connected incidents  depicting  activity  and 


Rehearsing — Time  and  Rhythm       85 

life,  as  in  a  street,  at  a  railway  station,  in 
a  ballroom,  in  the  lobby  of  a  hotel,  are  ob- 
viously meant  to  be  played  briskly.  In 
hght  comedies,  where  the  close  of  an  act  is 
usually  a  crisis  laughable  or  humorously 
sentimental,  it  is  best  to  quicken  the  pace 
all  through  the  latter  part  of  the  act  up  to 
the  fall  of  the  curtain.  Plays  of  violent 
action  are  apt  to  call  for  a  rapid  pace, 
which  will  be  followed  by  strongly  con- 
trasting passages  of  tense  emotion  played 
very  slowly.  The  first  act  of  "The  Great 
Divide"  is  a  splendid  example  of  this. 
When  the  situation  at  the  close  of  the  act 
is  imbued  with  deep  feeling,  exclusive  of 
sexual  passion,  let  the  pace  slacken  down 
till  the  movement  is  so  slight  that  the  slow 
and  quiet  descent  of  the  curtain  will  hardly 
be  noticed.  Hurry  a  closing  scene  of  this 
description,  like  that  in  the  last  act  of 
"Cyrano  de  Bergerac,"  for  instance,  and 
you  ruin  it  forever. 


86        Amateur  Stage  Directing 

One  suggests  "slow"  or  "fast"  for  this  or 
that  scene;  but  it  should  be  borne  in  mind 
all  the  tune  that  the  two  terms  are  not 
meant  to  be  contradictory  but  compara- 
tive. Amateurs  must  be  kept  at  all  haz- 
ards from  hurrying  and  gabbling,  as  most 
of  them  do,  thereby  missing  one  "value" 
after  another:  they  must  be  drilled  to 
maintain  a  steadiness  of  pace  and  cadence. 
No  scene  can  be  rushed  through.  Wliat 
may  appear  to  the  actors  an  intolerably 
slow  pace,  is  often  exactly  calculated  to 
win  a  resi^onse  from  the  audience,  will  per- 
fectly convey  the  sense  and  point  of  the 
passage  across  the  footlights.  A  rate  of 
speed  must  always  be  chosen  which  is  slow 
enough  for  the  actors  to  act  the  scene  in- 
stead of  merely  reciting  it.  Remember 
that  more  than  half  of  the  purport  of  any 
scene  is  to  be  conveyed  by  the  action  and 
facial  expression  of  the  players.  Thus  to 
convey  a  meaning  requires  an  appreciable 


Rehearsing — Pauses  87 

time.  Deliberation — not  dawdling,  which 
is  either  a  slovenly  crime  or  a  mark  of  weak 
wits — means  that  opportunity  is  given  to 
play  the  scene  "for  all  there  is  in  it." 
Every  movement  on  the  stage  must  be  ex- 
pressive, suggestive,  full  of  color  and  in- 
terest, made  to  live.  This  cannot  be  ac- 
complished by  a  mere  fluent  reading  of 
the  lines  of  the  play.  Slow  is  the  watch- 
word. You  can  read  in  an  hour  and  a 
half  a  play  that  will  require  two  hours  and 
a  half  really  to  act. 

PAUSES 

If  you  decide  to  play  with  deliberation 
— not  to  rush  and  huddle  the  action  of  the 
play,  however  brisk  may  be  the  general 
movement,  you  will  immediately  perceive 
that  this  excellent  quality  is  secured 
mainly  by  establishing  good  long  pauses 
between  many  of  the  speeches.  It  is  true 
that  there  is  no  terror,  in  the  opinion  of 


88         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

the  amateur,  equal  to  that  of  having  to 
keep  silent,  save  the  kindred  one  of  having 
to  keep  still.  Unless  he  is  speaking,  he  is 
apt  to  feel  lost  and  wretched,  simply  be- 
cause he  does  not  know  how  to  act.  The 
seconds  of  his  silences  appear  to  him  like 
minutes  in  their  duration.  Let  the  man- 
ager insist  on  proper  pauses,  and  he  will  be 
bombarded  with  entreaties  and  threats 
from  those  members  of  his  cast  who  are 
sure  they  appear  perfectly  silly.  But  he 
must  stand  his  ground ;  he  can  meet  all  the 
worry  of  his  actors  by  training  them  how 
best  they  can  demean  themselves  in  the  in- 
tervals he  has  demanded  of  them.  The 
point  of  allowing  these  good,  marked  in- 
tervals of  silence  is  obvious  enough.  It  is 
then  that  the  actor  has  an  opportunity  to 
show  by  his  play  what  is  going  on  in  the 
mind  of  the  character  he  is  representing; 
he  can  do  more  in  the  way  of  genuine  and 
convincing  impersonation  when  he  is  say- 


Rehearsing — Pauses  89 

ing  nothing  than  by  the  longest  set  of 
speeches.  The  play  of  feeling  shows  when 
the  actor  is  silent — in  his  face,  in  his 
slightest  gesture  and  movement ;  it  is  in  the 
silences  that  you  feel  the  attention  of  the 
audience  riveted  to  the  stage  and  what  is 
going  on  there. 

The  actor  with  ample  resources  of  tech- 
nique will  long  for  a  pause;  the  amateur 
will  dread  it.  Of  course,  a  mere  blank  in 
the  action  would  be  intolerable ;  the  coach's 
every  effort  will  be  bent  on  helping  the 
actor  to  fill  up  the  pause  with  expressive 
action  and  by-play.  And  it  is  perfectly 
true  that,  no  matter  how  badly  they  play, 
amateurs  who  make  the  best  use  they  can 
•  of  deliberate  pauses  in  the  course  of  any 
scene,  will  give  a  richer,  and  fuller,  and 
more  interesting  performance,  than  those 
who  merely  recite  fluently.  They  will  ap- 
pear to  be  thinking  their  parts.  So  very 
important  is  this  need  of  expressive  inter- 


90         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

vals,  that  one  is  quite  safe  in  saying  that, 
when  you  coach  any  amateur  play,  spend 
thrice  the  time  on  teaching  the  cast  how  to 
play  a  silent  passage  than  on  drill  in  read- 
ing lines. 

A  simple  and  practical  way  of  reckoning 
the  comparative  length  of  pauses  is  to 
count  beats.  If  the  manager  reckons  at. 
the  rate  of  one  hundred  counts  to  the  min- 
ute, he  will  have  a  tried  and  accepted  basis 
to  go  on.  A  little  practice  with  his  com- 
pany will  fix  this  "count"  in  their  minds. 
Thus,  at  rehearsal,  if  he  wishes  an  actor  to 
take  a  little  time  before  reading  some 
speech,  the  manager  will  bid  him  to  "count 
five"  (say)  before  he  speaks.  Often  the 
manager  will  make  the  count  aloud,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  others.  Another  character 
makes  his  entrance  (say)  after  a  "count 
of  ten."  And  the  pauses,  thus  mechani- 
cally established,  will  range  in  practice 
from  "two,"  as  high  as  "twenty,"  or  even 


Rehearsing — Pauses  91 

(as  often  happens  on  the  professional 
stage)  to  "thirty."  Getting  the  general 
idea  of  the  length  of  the  pauses  well  in 
mind  gives  an  excellent  notion  of  the  gen- 
eral speed  at  which  a  scene  is  to  be  taken ; 
the  perfectly  mechanical  counting  will  es- 
tabhsh  very  solidly  what  may  be  called  for 
want  of  a  better  name  the  rhythm  of  the 
scene.  For  no  sooner  does  a  pair  of  actors 
begin  to  read  a  scene  with  the  silences  well 
marked  and  each  of  the  proper  duration, 
than  they  begin  to  read  their  lines  rapidly 
or  slowly,  almost  unconsciously,  in  a  kind 
of  cadence  derived  from  the  length  of  the 
silences  they  follow  or  precede.  This 
same  device  of  a  regular  count,  or  beat,  to 
mark  the  length  of  the  pauses  will  be 
found  of  inestimable  value  in  steadying  a 
company  of  amateurs  through  any  sus- 
tained passage.  When  every  actor  on  the 
stage  knows  the  length  of  time  to  be  al- 
lowed for  any  interval  between  speeches, 


92         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

he  will  time  his  own  play  accurately,  he 
will  not  get  nervous  over  the  fear  that 
somebody  has  missed  a  cue.  Just  here  be 
it  said  that  the  prompter  must  be  perfectly 
familiar  with  the  rate  of  speed  at  which  a 
l^assage  is  to  be  read ;  otherwise,  in  a  panic, 
he  will  be  breaking  in  with  hoarse  admoni- 
tions to  the  heroine  when  she  is  purposely 
holding  back  from  reading  some  speech, 
and  so  make  himself  extremely  unpopular. 
One  word  of  caution  will  not  be  out  of 
place  at  the  conclusion  of  any  dissertation 
on  timing  or  pacing  a  scene.  There  are 
two  varieties  of  the  genus  actor,  either  of 
whom  can  totally  upset  the  most  carefully 
cadenced  and  flowing  passage  imaginable. 
And  both  must  be  well  disciplined  from 
the  start  of  rehearsals.  One  is  the  dull 
person,  with  little  or  no  ear  and  sense  of 
rhythm.  He  it  is  who  invariably  reads  his 
speeches  a  shade  too  slowly  or  too  quickly, 
who  picks  up  his  cue  haltingly.     What 


Rehearsing — Pauses  93 

shall  be  done  with  him  depends  wholly  on 
circumstances.  Perhaps  he  has  guaran- 
teed the  expenses  of  the  show ;  perhaps  he 
is  engaged  to  the  heroine.  So  you  cannot 
always  risk  murdering  him  without  risking 
the  success  of  the  play.  But  any  lesser 
penalty,  as  cruel  and  unnatural  as  may  be 
deemed  appropriate,  should  be  dealt  out  to 
that  offender  unsparingly.  If  he  only 
knew  how  other  members  of  the  company 
will  come  to  hate  him — !  The  other  crim- 
inal is  the  amateur  actor  who  actually  is 
talented,  or  believes  himself  so  to  be. 
Give  him  an  inch  and  he  will  appropriate 
the  whole  stage.  Once  let  him  "find"  him- 
self in  a  scene  which  gives  him  any  chance 
to  display  his  abihty,  and  he  is  sure  to  take 
all  the  time  he  wants,  often  badly  delay- 
ing a  passage,  sometimes  blithely  ruining 
it.  Here  naught  will  avail  but  the  man- 
ager's authority  and  tact.  Sometimes  he 
must  surrender,  and  time  the  scene  all 


94)         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

over  again,  to  fit  the  "star's"  selfishness. 
But  it  is  far  better  to  conquer,  even  at  the 
risk  of  a  pitched  battle,  and  compel  the 
"star"  to  play  his  bits  in  time  with  the 
rest  of  the  action.  For,  seriously,  the 
time,  the  place,  the  swing,  the  cadence  of  a 
scene  is  no  small  thing  to  trifle  with ;  it  is  so 
difiicult  and  delicate  to  establish,  that  only 
the  most  serious  and  weighty  considera- 
tions should  be  allowed  to  alter  it. 

IN   GENERAL 

It  is  perhaps  well,  at  the  first  rehearsal, 
to  walk  through  whatever  act  of  the  play 
you  elect  to  begin  with,  book  in  hand,  for 
the  sake  of  letting  the  actors  get  some  idea 
of  the  story,  and  a  general  sense  of  what 
are  the  obviously  important  scenes  of  the 
play,  as  well  as  the  general  relations  of  the 
characters  to  one  another.  With  the  sec- 
ond rehearsal,  however,  begin  to  play  the 
thing  in  minute  detail.     Take  up  first  the 


Rehearsing — In  General  95 

"big"  scenes,  and  study  these  inch  by  inch; 
take  next  all  the  important  entrances  and 
exits;  next  every  bit  of  special  character 
work  among  minor  characters ;  next  those 
passages  which  serve  merely  as  transitions 
from  one  scene  to  another.  Establish  the 
pace  of  each  scene,  mostly  by  determining 
the  duration  of  the  intervals  between 
speeches,  very  early. 

It  is  best,  probably,  to  start  rehearsing 
each  separate  scene  or  passage  with  the 
idea  of  bringing  out  only  the  more  obvious 
and  easy  "values."  If  you  try  for  too 
much  at  the  outset  you  will  get  along  too 
slowly,  and  will  perhaps  bore  your  actors. 
But  later,  if  you  keep  in  mind  always  the 
discovery  of  new  and  richer  "values,"  and 
get  your  actors  so  interested  in  their  parts 
that  they  too  will  seek  the  fullest  interpre- 
tation, you  will  find  it  very  profitable  and 
enjoyable  too,  to  read  more  and  more  into 
nearly  every  line.     If  the  time  at  your  dis- 


96         Amateur  Stage  Directing 

posal  for  rehearsal  is  very  limited,  of 
course  you  can  only  "touch  the  high  spots" 
all  through  the  pla)\  Comj^are  the  way  in 
which  a  two-a-day  stock  company  plays 
some  piece  with  the  manner  of  its  render- 
ing by  a  really  high  grade  company,  which 
has  had  long  months  for  rehearsal,  and  you 
will  note  how  the  former  fails  by  much  to 
extract  from  the  play  all  there  is  in  it  of 
dramatic  fare.  Amateurs,  too,  are  often 
under  severe  limitation  in  the  way  of 
talent;  the  stage  manager  must  judge  very 
carefully  as  to  what  he  can  safely  get  his 
company  to  do  smartly  and  surely.  By 
trying  for  too  much,  he  may  miss  all  along 
the  line.  But  do  not,  on  the  contrary,  be 
content  with  too  little — for  that  is  the  way 
of  the  amateur  we  want  not  to  follow. 

The  stage  manager  must  be  very  strict 
in  the  matter  of  getting  his  actors  to  re- 
hearse without  looking  at  their  books,  at 
the  earliest  possible  moment.     Depend- 


Rehearsing — In  General  97 

ence  on  the  printed  text  is  fatal.  After 
two  weeks'  rehearsing,  there  should  be  no 
good  excuse  for  carrying  the  script  in  the 
hand.  If  the  actor  is  continually  glanc- 
ing at  his  book,  he  cannot  possibly  do  any 
acting;  he  will  learn  his  hues  far  faster  by 
an  effort  of  memory  than  by  constant 
reading  of  them. 

Last  of  all,  remember  that  it  is  the 
manager  with  the  quiet  voice  and  the 
smooth  manner  who  gets  the  best  results. 
He  who  helps  and  suggests  is  the  one  who 
wins.  He  who  interrupts  all  the  time, 
who  nags,  who  is  sarcastic,  is  doomed  to 
utter  failure.  Be  assured  also  that  stage 
managing  a  play  is  frankly  very  exhaust- 
ing work;  and  anybody  without  a  good 
steady  nerve  and  a  good  temper  had  best 
not  undertake  it  at  all.  If  you  cannot 
keep  cool,  if  you  cannot  retain  a  tone  of 
authority  without  screaming  and  bluster- 
ing, do  not  accept  the  responsibility. 


V 

THE  AMATEUR  ACTOR'S  A-B-C 

It  is  far  from  being  the  purpose  of  this 
chapter  to  essay  the  probably  impossible 
task  of  reducing  even  the  simplest  aspects 
of  the  actor's  art  to  any  set  of  formulas  or 
rules.  Within  the  limits  of  an  elemen- 
tary handbook  like  this,  allowing  that 
there  is  anything  one  can  write  down  about 
acting,  enough  will  have  been  said  if  there 
appears  a  list  of  "Don'ts,"  predicated  on 
the  shortcomings  of  the  average  amateur, 
and  some  suggestions  as  to  the  rudimen- 
tary principles  of  diction  and  action. 


THE    MENTAL   ATTITUDE 

The  skilled  professional  actor  is  en- 
dowed with  or  develops  a  kind  of  dual  per- 
sonality.    When  he  is  on  the  stage,  one 


98 


Actor's  ABC— The  Mind        99 

part  of  him  incarnates,  through  the 
imagination,  the  character  in  the  play. 
For  the  time,  he  actually  is  lago,  Lear, 
Falstaff,  Brutus,  Tartufe.  The  real  man 
has  projected  himself;  he  is  no  longer  (for 
the  moment)  Booth,  Irving,  or  Coquehn. 
He  is  a  king,  a  knave,  a  braggart,  a  hero. 
But  at  the  very  same  time,  the  actor  is — 
never  so  consciously  or  keenly — himself. 
He  is  so  acutely  self  conscious  that  he 
watches  his  other  half  perform;  and  con- 
versely, his  imaginative  side  never  acts  so 
effectively  as  when  his  real  self  is  alert  to 
direct,  correct,  guide.  One  may  dismiss 
as  romance  the  old  belief  that  a  great  actor 
is  ever  "lost  in  the  part."  His  perform- 
ance, a  work  of  the  imagination,  plus 
talent  for  mimicry,  is  moving  and  sincere 
and  compelling  only  because  his  critical 
faculties  are  at  work  every  minute  to  keep 
him  going — to  give  form  and  substance  to 
what  his  fancy  has  conceived. 


100       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

But  whereas  these  two  sets  of  faculties 
are,  in  the  case  of  the  great  actor,  ex- 
quisitely balanced,  and  work  in  perfect 
harmony  to  achieve  a  fine  result,  there  is  a 
large  class  of  amateurs  who,  with  the  same 
dual  equipment,  are  quite  helpless.  The 
balance  is  not  there;  the  training  is  want- 
ing to  one  side  or  the  other.  Either  the 
beginner  is  unable  to  imagine  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  part  he  may  be  called  to  as- 
sume, through  lack  of  that  peculiar  fac- 
ulty we  call  sympathy  and  quick  appre- 
hension ;  or  he  is,  as  it  were,  dumb,  incapa- 
ble of  expressing  what  he  feels  and  knows 
will  delineate  the  character.  For  the  lat- 
ter class  there  is  hope  in  plenty;  all  he 
lacks  is  good  technical  equij^ment.  But 
beware  of  the  would-be  actor  who  cannot 
conceive,  cannot  imagine  the  outlines  and 
general  look  of  a  character  all  by  himself. 
He  is  hopeless.  He  it  is  who  is  the 
"stick." 


Actor's  A-B-C—The  Mind      101 

In  other  words,  and  this  probably  lies 
at  the  bottom  of  all  good  acting,  the 
player  must  feel  his  part.  He  must,  for 
the  time  being,  enter  into,  share,  make  his 
own,  the  feelings,  passions,  mental  work- 
ings of  the  character  he  wishes  to  play ;  he 
is  to  "sense"  the  character.  This  is  noth- 
ing that  can  be  taught;  it  is  an  endow- 
ment; one  possesses  it,  or  one  is  utterly 
without  it.  There  are  fairly  competent 
actors  who  have  only  a  small  share  of  this 
faculty,  it  is  true;  it  is  the  fashion  to  let 
them  appear  at  high  salaries;  but  how 
many  of  them  there  are  who,  in  every  part 
they  assume,  retain  ever  a  flavor,  a  hint, 
a  suggestion,  of  their  own  personality! 
How  few  there  are  who  are  able  really  to 
sink  themselves,  really  to  impersonate! 
But  at  least  let  there  be  an  earnest  effort 
to  appreciate  the  part;  let  the  actor  ask 
himself  continually  what  the  character  is 
thinking,  what  he  is  feeling;  let  him  en- 


102       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

deavor,  for  the  moment,  to  make  those 
thoughts  and  feehngs  his  own.  A  sympa- 
thetic reahzation  of  the  character's  con- 
tent— that  is  what  we  are  after. 

Earnestly  sought  and  assiduously  prac- 
ticed, this  hahit  or  gift  of  "sensing"  char- 
acters will  tend  strongly  to  produce  in  the 
actor  the  absolutely  essential  quality  of 
acting  all  the  time  he  is  on  the  stage.  It 
must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  instant 
he  drops  out  of  his  part,  even  mentally, 
he  is  as  good  as  out  of  the  play.  His  part 
in  the  composition  of  the  stage  picture, 
his  contribution  to  the  action  of  the  scene, 
must  be  sustained  with  perfect  faithful- 
ness and  unflagging  devotion.  However 
unimportant,  the  character  he  plays  has 
a  certain  value  whenever  he  appears;  and 
this  value  must  be  given  in  full  measure. 
In  action,  let  him  try  his  best  to  get  every 
possible  ounce  of  interest  and  worth  out 
of  every  line  and  movement ;  let  him  do  to 


Actors  ABC— The  Eyes      103 

the  full  what  he  believes  the  character 
would  do  under  the  circumstances.  In 
repose,  the  same  holds  good.  If  he  feels 
the  amateur's  usual  discomfort,  when  he 
is  not  doing  or  saying  something,  and 
feels  himself  merely  in  the  way,  let  him 
keep  right  on,  acting  harder  than  ever. 
That  will  cure  his  nervousness.  Out- 
wardly, this  attitude  of  mind,  in  repose, 
will  show  itself  by  intelligent  attention, 
perhaps,  if  the  actor  is  listening  or  watch- 
ing. He  will  really  and  truly  listen  to 
what  the  other  actor  is  saying;  he  will 
support  the  other  by  letting  the  effect  of 
the  other's  words  show  in  his  face  and 
bearing.  He  will  show  his  attention  also, 
by  not  letting  his  eyes  wander. 

THE   actor's   eyes 

This  matter  of  the  actor's  eyes  is  very 
important.  It  ought  to  be  brought  to  the 
amateur's     attention     early.     He     must 


104       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

learn  and  appreciate  the  great  truth  and 
principle  that  whether  he  is  in  the  center 
of  the  stage  or  a  humble  super  in  the 
Roman  mob,  he  is  to  use  his  eyes  with  the 
very  greatest  care.     Remember  that  the 
eye    is     the     most     expressive     feature. 
Without  the  slightest  aid  of  speech  or  ges- 
ture, the  movement  of  the  eyes — lowering, 
closing,  raising,  dilating — may  be  made 
to  convey  the  most  varying  emotions  with 
tremendous      vividness.     It      must      be 
drilled  and  drummed  into  the  beginner 
on  the  stage  that  any  uncertainty  of  re- 
gard, any  shifting  of  the  eyes  aimlessly, 
will  absolutely  kill  any  speech  the  char- 
acter may  be  delivering.     Let  the  eyes 
w^ander,  and  straightway  it  looks  to  the 
audience  as  if  the  actor's  mind  was  wan- 
dering.    A  steady  regard  means  concen- 
tration.    A    regard    deliberately    shifted 
signifies,  with  vivid  clearness,  a  change  of 
mind  or  feeling.     Watch  the  eyes  of  any 


Actor's  A-B-C—The  Eyes      105 

good  actor;  note  how  steady  they  are. 
He  speaks  more  pointedly  and  eloquently 
with  his  eyes  than  with  his  lips. 

This  counsel,  that  the  actor  shall  act 
every  minute — that  he  shall  have  in  mind, 
without  interruption  or  intermission,  the 
one  great  task  of  impersonation,  the  as- 
sumption of  the  character's  feelings  and 
traits — lies  at  the  foundation  of  all  rules 
set  for  his  guidance.  Till  he  can  give  a 
sense  of  vitality  and  reality  to  the  charac- 
ter by  the  use  of  his  imagination,  there  is 
not  much  gained  by  drilhng  him  in  how  to 
move  and  speak.  Train  the  actor  to  ob- 
serve types  of  character,  and  to  watch 
their  external  manifestations ;  train  him  to 
imitate  these  as  faithfully  as  possible — 
to  mimic.  This  is  the  point  of  departure. 
What  comes  later  is  not  much  more  than 
acquired  skill  in  presenting  his  impersona- 
tion in  public  effectively. 


106       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

MOVEMENT 

A  few  hints  as  to  the  proper  control  and 
use  of  one's  members  on  the  stage,  a  word 
or  two  on  how  the  voice  may  best  be  em- 
ployed,— externals,  but  things  necessary 
to  learn  if  one  wishes  to  appear  with  a 
fair  degree  of  ease  and  grace, — will  not  be 
amiss,  in  any  chapter  intended  for  begin- 
ners, though  it  is  desired,  above  all,  to 
impress  on  the  amateur  the  great  necessity 
of  conscientious  effort  at  impersonation. 

In  another  place  will  be  found  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  broad  principles  which  gov- 
ern general  movement  on  the  stage,  in- 
tended for  the  stage  manager  who 
watches  the  rehearsal  from  "out  in  front." 
We  saw  there  all  general  movement  on 
the  stage  is  governed  entirely  by  the  ne- 
cessities of  the  action,  and  proceeds  from 
one  grouping  arranged  for  one  special  mo- 
ment of  time,  to  another,  arranged  for  a 


Actor's  A-B-C — Movement     107 

succeeding  moment.  A  similar  principle, 
it  is  believed,  should  strictly  govern  the 
movement  of  each  separate  actor. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  every 
least  movement  of  the  actor's  body  or 
limbs  or  head  or  eyes  (and  this  applies  to 
the  least  important  character)  has  a 
double  effect:  (1)  it  has  an  important 
bearing  on  the  composition  of  the  stage 
picture ;  ( 2 )  it  is  always  taken  by  the  audi- 
ence as  having  a  meaning  connected  with 
the  plot  of  the  play,  as  reveahng  charac- 
ter, or  as  emphasizing  some  special  emo- 
tional or  picturesque  effect.  This  is  true 
because  every  action  and  movement  of 
every  actor  is  vividly  apparent  in  the  bril- 
liant light  of  the  stage — nothing  goes  un- 
seen ;  and  it  is  also  true,  because  the  audi- 
ence assumes  (and  must  be  let  to)  that  the 
people  on  the  stage  are  really  people  in 
the  play  and  nobody  else.  So  each  slight- 
est gesture,  change  of  position,  or  change 


108       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

of  pose,  must  be  carefully  thought  out. 
The  aimless  movement  confuses — worse 
than  that,  it  dims  the  general  effect  of  the 
scene.  And  this  is  quite  as  true  for  the 
individual  as  it  is  for  the  whole  company. 
Here,  as  there,  good  counsel  would  ad- 
vise no  movement  without  a  meaning. 

Conversely,  unless  the  actor  has  some_ 
definite  purpose  in  moving,  he  is  to  remain 
absolutely  still.  This  is  extremely  diffi- 
cult to  teach  to  amateurs ;  but  it  is  an  ideal 
which  should  be  diligently  striven  for. 
Repose  is  vitally  important,  because  here, 
as  elsewhere,  any  movement  must  be  made 
significant.  Good  actors  move  about  the 
stage  very  little.  Even  in  a  bustling, 
lively  farce,  there  is  less  running  here  and 
there  than  appears.  Good  actors  are  very 
sparing  of  their  gestures.  And  so,  when 
they  do  cross  the  stage,  stand  up,  sit, 
stiffen,  relax,  turn,  advance,  draw  back  a 
step, — do  anything,  in  short,  their  move- 


Actors  A-B-C — Movement      109 

ment  arrests  attention  instantly.  If  con- 
trasted sharply  with  a  prevailing  repose 
and  repression,  the  turn  of  a  head,  a  sud- 
denly clenched  fist  or  leveled  finger,  a 
dawning  smile,  the  closing  of  the  eyes,  will 
tell  a  whole  story,  will  reveal  a  thought  or 
a  feeling  with  absolutely  unerring  ac- 
curacy and  the  greatest  vividness. 

It  should  be  obvious,  however,  that  the 
actor  must  work  very  hard  to  choose,  in 
every  case,  a  gesture  or  an  expression 
which  will  be  unmistakable  in  its  meaning. 
It  must  be  decisive,  illustrative,  vivid.  It 
can  admit  of  no  doubtful  interpretation. 
Here  the  amateur  will  need  lots  of  study 
and  care.  Wliat  gesture,  what  expres- 
sion, does  most  vividly  convey  the  feeling 
in  question?  It  is  the  problem  which  the 
actors  in  the  moving  picture  plays  have 
to  deal  with,  and  solve  also ;  it  is  what  all 
good  players  of  pantomime  understand 
thoroughly.     It  may  be  helpful  to  many 


110       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

amateurs  who  are  in  doubt  as  to  what  ges- 
tures, what  alteration  of  the  features,  best 
convey  a  certain  meaning,  to  learn  all  they 
can  from  the  play  of  the  "movies"  actor. 

Once  an  actor's  personal  play  in  any 
single  moment  is  decided  on  and  adopted, 
there  should  be  the  greatest  hesitation  in 
changing  it  in  any  way.  Once  rehearsed 
and  found  satisfactory,  it  becomes  almost 
immediately  a  part  of  the  fabric  of  the 
play.  Other  actors  will  look  for  it;  its 
duration  will  become  a  very  important 
consideration  in  the  timing  of  the  whole 
scene. 

Speech  follows  action,  on  the  stage. 
Contrary  to  the  practice  of  the  orator,  who 
uses  his  gestures  merely  to  enforce  his 
words,  the  actor  should  proceed  on  the 
principle  that  his  lines  merely  amplify  and 
illuminate  the  suggestion  clearly  conveyed 
by  his  play.  Thus,  in  practice,  if  move- 
ment or  gesture  is  desired  with  any  speech. 


Actor's  A-B-C — Movement      111 

let  it  precede  the  spoken  word  hy^  a  very 
little. 

Amateur  actors  commonly  believe  that 
the  attention  of  the  audience  is  riveted  to 
their  hands.  To  dispose  of  those  most  im- 
comfortable  members  appears  a  very 
great  problem.  But  the  truth  is,  that  it 
is  vastly  more  important,  from  every  point 
of  view,  that  the  actor  shall  have  a  care 
about  his  feet.  The  way  an  actor  stands 
is  what  people  in  the  audience  really  no- 
tice. And  a  word  of  caution  may  be  de- 
sirable here,  since  we  are  talking  about 
very  elementary  matters.  Everything  re- 
quires that,  when  the  actor  is  standing  still, 
he  must  stand  absolutely  still.  Just  as 
his  eyes  must  not  stray  vaguely,  so  his 
bootsoles  must  be  screwed  to  the  floor, 
when  he  is  not  moving.  He  may  retain 
any  pose  for  only  a  few  seconds,  but  once 
placed,  he  is  to  stay  planted. 

If  the  actor  is  standing  obliqued  to  the 


112       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

audience,  the  upstage  foot  is  that  which  is 
to  be  advanced. 

On  entering  from  either  side,  let  the  up- 
stage foot  take  the  first  step  in. 

Kneel  on  the  downstage  knee;  if  you 
drop  on  both  knees,  let  the  upstage  knee 
sink  to  the  floor  the  last. 

A  general  caution  also  as  to  the  distri- 
bution of  the  weight  would  advise  that  at 
all  times,  w^hen  he  is  in  repose,  the  actor 
shall  be  in  such  physical  balance  that  he 
can  leave  his  position  and  assume  another 
gracefully,  and  without  any  effect  of  shuf- 
fling or  indecision.  He  must  take  off 
cleanly,  as  a  runner  would  put  it.  The 
good  actor  has  a  kind  of  crispness  and 
alertness  in  his  bearing,  an  easy  and  flex- 
ible balance ;  he  moves  with  precision. 

GESTURES 

As  to  gestures,  what  can  be  said?  Only 
this,  perhaps,  in  this  chaj^ter:    Avoid,  un- 


Actor's  A-B-C— Gestures       113 

less  you  are  deliberately  trying  for  an  ef- 
fect of  awkwardness  and  angularity,  any 
gestures  with  the  arm  held  and  moved 
stiffly.  The  sweeping,  circular  gesture  is 
still  the  most  picturesque  and  the  most 
sightly.  Maybe  an  illustration  will  help 
explain  this  principle.  Suppose  you  de- 
sire to  pick  up  a  letter  lying  on  a  table  at 
your  right,  and  then  hand  it  to  a  person 
standing  on  your  left.  Many  amateurs 
will  instinctively  pick  the  letter  up  in  the 
right  hand,  retain  it,  and  extend  the  same 
hand  to  the  other  person  half  turning 
the  body  to  do  so.  This  is  wi'ong,  tech- 
nically, from  a  good  many  standpoints. 
The  movement  is  awkward  in  itself;  it 
tends  to  hide  your  face  from  the  audience 
at  a  moment  when  interest  is  awake;  it 
causes  you  to  gesture  with  your  downstage 
hand  and  arm.  A  far  better  way  would 
be  to  pick  up  the  letter  with  the  right 
hand;  change  it  to  the  left;  and  then  ex- 


114       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

tend  the  left  hand  to  your  fellow  actor, 
the  movements  of  either  hand  to  be  such 
that  each  describes  the  arc  of  an  ellipse. 
Always  point,  gesticulate,  beckon,  and 
the  like,  with  the  upstage  hand  and 
arm. 

THE   STAGE   EMBRACE 

Finally,  what  chapter  of  this  sort  would 
be  complete  without  a  reference  to  that 
moment  trying  yet  thrilling,  for  amateurs, 
which  is  enlivened  by  the  "stage  embrace"? 
Awkwardly  taken,  it  leads  only  to  em- 
barrassment and  rage  on  the  part  of  the 
actors,  to  shrill  merriment  on  the  part  of 
the  audience;  but  smoothly  and  easily  en- 
gineered, it  brings  the  curtain  down  tri- 
umphantly. Briefly  then,  if  the  hero  and 
the  heroine — as  in  who  shall  say  how  many 
hundred  plays  ? — are  standing  center,  with 
their  profiles  turned  to  the  audience,  let 
the  man  slip  his  downstage  arm  under  the 


Actor's  A-B-C—The  Voice      115 

girl's,  while  her  downstage  arm  encircles 
his  shoulder.  The  man's  upstage  arm,  on 
the  side  away  from  the  audience,  is  placed 
outside  the  girl's.  But  it  is  with  the  up- 
stage arm  that  he  draws  her  to  him. 

Only  a  very  few  matters  are  taken  up 
here ;  it  must  be  clearly  understood  that  we 
have  attempted  to  discuss  only  the  most 
rudimentary  principles  of  stage  deport- 
ment. But  if  the  amateur  will  try  to  act 
all  the  time,  stand  still  except  when  the 
action  of  the  play  requires  him  to  move, 
keep  his  balance,  and  be  consistent  in  what- 
ever "business"  he  undertakes,  he  will  have 
at  least  made  a  start. 

THE   VOICE 

A  few  fundamentals  of  proper  reading 
are  very  necessary  for  the  amateur  to 
learn ;  and  these  are  quite  within  his  reach. 
They  may  be  insisted  on  by  the  stage 
manager  fairly. 


116       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

The  actor  must  enunciate  clearly;  by 
which  is  meant  that  every  word  and  syl- 
lable shall  be  well  shaped  and  spoken  so 
as  to  be  heard  distinctly.  Skillful  read- 
ing, which  gives  the  true  value  to  every 
slightest  inflection,  is  probably  out  of  the 
reach  of  the  average  amateur;  he  is  too 
badly  handicapped,  generally  speaking,  by 
native  habits  of  slovenly  speech.  But  the 
cruder  sins  of  faulty  elocution,  such  as  the 
blurring  of  consonants  and  queer  perver- 
sions of  vowel  sounds,  should  not  be  toler- 
ated even  in  the  least  pretentious  com- 
pany. The  latter  crime  consists  in  giving 
to  all  the  vowels  a  sound  most  like  that  ex- 
pressed by  a  short  "u."  Thus,  "Amur- 
rican,"  "Yurrup,"  "Englund,"  "Unly," 
"Urgunt,"  "umung,"  "goun'  "  (by  which 
such  innocent  and  worthy  words  as  Ameri- 
can, Europe,  England,  only,  urgent, 
among,  and  going,  are  intended),  are  on 
the  lips  of  all  slovens;  and,  while  such 


Actor's  A-B-C—The  Voice      117 

vocables  are  bad  enougb  in  daily  speech, 
they  become,  on  the  stage  perfectly  in- 
tolerable. They  give  any  actor  a  stamp 
of  commonness  instantly.  Worse,  their 
use  makes  it  hard  for  the  actor  to  make 
himself  understood.  Similarly,  we  must 
insist  on  a  crisp  and  resonant  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  final  consonants.  It  may  be 
that  any  special  care  bestowed  on  -nd, 
-st,  -ng,  and  their  fellows,  above  all 
when  the  next  word  begins  with  a  con- 
sonant, will  appear  to  the  actor  extremely 
affected,  and  will  have  the  effect  of  slow- 
ing up  his  facility  and  ease  of  speaking. 
But  this  is  not  the  case,  in  reality.  Keep 
at  it,  till  any  temporary  inconvenience  is 
overcome,  for  the  gain  is  simply  immense. 
An  actor  should  not  be  slovenly  and  lax 
in  his  manner  of  speech,  any  more  than  he 
should  lounge  and  slump  in  his  bearing. 
Care  in  these  two  regards  will  do  away 
with  the  danger,  probably,  which  results 


118       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

from  running  words  together  by  the  elision 
of  last  or  first  syllables. 

Effective  enunciation  is  also,  very 
largely,  a  matter  of  proper  breath  sup- 
port, and  of  the  formation  of  the  sound  by 
the  proper  vocal  organs.  Unfortunately, 
it  is  probably  the  case  that  not  one  ama- 
teur actor  in  a  hundred  will  have  any  op- 
portunity for  instruction  and  driU  in  these 
branches  of  voice  culture;  certainly  the 
duty  of  the  stage  manager  for  any  given 
production  can  hardly  extend  so  far.  But 
the  actor  should  reahze,  and  the  manager 
must  show,  that,  while  the  stage  does  not 
demand  loud  speech,  it  does  require  a 
solid  resonance  of  tone.  Let  the  amateur 
practice  assiduously  the  trick  of  deep 
breathing  and  of  slight  expenditure  of 
breath  for  any  sound.  Let  him  shape  each 
vocable  very  carefully  as  he  pronounces  it, 
even  though,  at  first,  he  seems  to  himself 
to  be  exaggerating  absurdly. 


Actor's  A'B-C—The  Voice     119 

One  often  hears  it  laid  down  as  a  rule 
that  the  actor's  voice  must  be  directed  to- 
ward the  audience.  An  inheritance  from 
the  old,  declamatory  stage;  a  convention 
established  when  the  construction  of  the 
stage  demanded  that  it  be  observed;  this 
obiter  dictum  of  the  older  generation  of 
managers  is  to-day  not  so  universally 
obeyed.  Probably  amateurs  are  too 
strictly  bound  by  it.  To  direct  the  voice 
outward,  all  the  time,  is  very  apt  to  give 
the  effect  of  stepj)ing  out  of  the  scene,  of 
unreality,  of  declamation.  It  is  best, 
probably,  that  the  actor  shall  consider  first 
the  sense  and  the  necessities  of  the  scene 
he  is  playing — addressing  the  other  actors 
rather  than  the  audience.  For,  by  dex- 
trous arrangement  of  the  people  on  the 
stage,  it  is  nearly  always  possible  to  com- 
bine an  effect  of  natural  interchange  of 
speeches  with  the  necessity  of  making  the 
audience  hear  every  word.     There  is  per- 


120       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

haps  one  exception  to  this  general,  loosely 
interpreted  rule.  Every  speech  which  ex- 
plains some  point  vital  to  an  understand- 
ing of  the  plot  of  the  play  should  be  read 
in  such  a  way  that,  even  at  the  slight  risk 
of  unnatural  attitude  and  intonation,  the 
whole  of  it  is  given  straight  to  the  specta- 
tors. But,  in  general,  it  is  probably  better 
to  have  the  actors  speak  from  such  posi- 
tions as  they  naturally  assume  in  the  course 
of  the  play's  action.  This  will  have  one 
excellent  effect,  at  all  events;  it  will  very 
neatly  checkmate  the  actor  who  is  not 
happy  unless  he  is  playing  straight  to  the 
audience,  for  the  sake  of  catching  the  at- 
tention and  applause  at  all  costs. 

Since  this  special  kind  of  sinner  is  usu- 
ally found  among  those  actors  who  play 
broad  character  parts,  with  good  oppor- 
tunities for  fun-making  or  tear-winning, 
this  paragraph  is  written  mainly  for  their 
benefit.     Playing  a  character  part,  if  there 


Actor's  A-B-C—The  Voice      121 

is  any  dialect  to  it,  or  any  very  marked 
physical  trait,  becomes  a  pitfall  indeed, 
and  a  straight  road  to  utter  failure,  unless 
the  actor  in  the  part  sustains  the  oddity  of 
speech  and  bearing  consistently.  This  is 
no  easy  task, — how  many  times  has  this 
comment  been  made  already  in  these 
pages  ? — but  it  simply  must  be  carried  out. 
The  character  actor  cannot  "let  down"  an 
instant. 

For  that  matter,  neither  can  any  actor, 
playing  any  part.  It  will  doubtless  be 
found  that,  for  many  amateurs,  the  in- 
creased resonance  of  tone  demanded,  to- 
gether with  the  effort  to  enunciate  clearly, 
will  tend  to  make  the  actor's  voice  take  on 
a  tone  and  quality  a  httle  different  from 
that  of  his  ordinary  speaking  voice;  nat- 
urally enough,  also,  almost  any  part  will 
color  one's  natural  voice  a  little,  in  itself. 
So,  if  this  does  happen,  let  the  actor  be 
quite  sure  that  he  is  going  to  sustain  his 


122       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

new  voice  all  through  the  play.  To  lose 
it,  and  to  revert  to  his  everyday  manner 
of  speaking,  will  give  the  effect  of  the 
actor's  stepping  clean  out  of  the  character 
he  is  impersonating. 

TEAJNI    ^A'ORK 

A  good  deal  has  been  made,  all  through . 
these  chapters,  of  the  point  that  the  suc- 
cessful performance  of  any  play  depends 
very  largely  on  the  completeness  with 
which  all  the  parts  are  made  to  move  to- 
gether toward  a  common  end.  For  one  of 
the  players  to  fail  to  do  his  share  pm*- 
posely,  from  bad  temper  or  mere  shiftless- 
ness,  is  certainly  no  less  a  crime  than  for  a 
performer  in  an  orchestra  to  play  out  of 
tune  and  time.  Not  speaking  of  the 
stupidity  and  selfishness  of  being  lazy  or 
sulky,  inattentive  or  officious,  it  is  enough 
to  call  the  actor's  attention  to  the  fact  that, 
if  he  does  not  play  his  part  just  as  well  as 


Actor's  A-B-C—Team  Work    123 

he  can,  if  he  does  not  conform  scrupulously 
and  willingly  to  the  limits  imposed  on  him, 
he  will  go  far  toward  ruining  the  produc- 
tion. It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  in 
any  well  balanced  performance,  every 
actor  depends  absolutely  on  his  fellows; 
with  one  part  awry,  the  whole  crumbles. 
Suppose  you  do  dislike  the  leading  lady; 
what  if  she  is  pretentious;  suppose  it  is 
true  that  she  got  her  part  only  through 
personal  "pull"  with  the  management? 
Never  mind.  Support  her  in  all  the 
scenes  you  play  with  her,  as  if  her  success 
was  your  dearest  wish  on  earth.  You  can 
easily  ruin  her  part;  you  can  make  her 
appear  foolish;  you  can  make  her  ex- 
tremely unhappy,  merely  by  forgetting  or 
maiming  your  own  lines  so  that  she  has  no 
cues  to  follow ;  you  can  be  listless  when  you 
should  be  animated;  you  can  fail  to  "play 
up"  in  any  of  a  thousand  ways,  and  so 
work  all  manner  of  satisfactory  revenges 


124       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

on  her  for  any  sort  of  grievance.  And 
this  is  sweet.  But  at  the  same  time,  sir, 
you  are  utterly  spoiHng  the  play,  and  that 
is  pretty  hard  on  the  other  people  playing 
with  you.  The  same  result,  ruin,  is 
achieved  most  successfully,  when  you  take 
more  time  than  is  right  for  your  pet  bits 
of  action,  when  you  deliberately  play  for. 
applause,  when  you  lounge  through  a  part 
you  do  not  fancy,  when  you  cut  or  alter, 
without  consulting  anybody,  some  speech 
that  may  not  please  you.  All  this  demor- 
alizes a  cast  completely.  Not  knowing 
what  you  are  going  to  do  next,  they  will 
get  uncertain  of  their  own  lines  and  parts, 
and  the  play  will  go  straight  to  pieces. 

No,  no,  team  work  is  the  thing.  Per- 
haps that  is  where  the  alleged  educational 
value  of  amateur  theatricals  comes  in. 
Subordination,  concession,  enthusiasm  for 
small  opportunities,  modesty  on  being  as- 
signed responsibilities,  eagerness  to  work 


Actor's  A-B-C—Team  Work    125 

for  a  single  ideal  which  is  not  selfish  but 
common — surely  all  these  qualities  are 
called  for  and  developed  in  any  group  of 
amateurs,  if  they  undertake  even  the 
simplest  play  of  all.  If  one  cannot  work 
for  the  common  good,  if  one  cannot  obey 
orders  without  question,  one  were  better 
off  the  stage  altogether.  One  hears  the 
taunt  that  the  only  excuse  for  "private 
theatricals"  is  the  vanity  of  the  actors,  who 
wish  to  parade  themselves  before  the  eyes 
of  their  indulgent  friends,  and  get  ap- 
plauded for  their  supposed  cleverness. 
Try  to  make  sure  that  in  your  case,  at 
least,  this  is  not  j  ustified.  Try  working  to 
make  the  "show"  just  as  successful  as  you 
possibly  can.  It  is  a  lot  more  satisfac- 
tory. 


VI 

MAKE-UP 

How  many  amateurs  take  pains  with 
their  make-ups?  Not  but  what  the  ma- 
jority are  persuaded  that  some  measure  of 
paint  and  powder  is  necessary,  if  only  for 
the  reason  that  "professionals  always  do," 
or  for  the  other  reason  that  the  roses  and 
lilies  of  the  toilet  table  are  thought  re- 
liable friends  when  nature  has  been  nig- 
gardly. But  while  it  is  easy  enough,  even 
in  Puritan  communities,  to  get  the  girls  to 
use  a  dab  of  rouge  and  a  flick  of  the  eye- 
brow pencil,  while  the  men — much  vainer! 
— are  usually  amused  by  sticking  on  false 
whiskers  or  cramming  on  ill  fitting  wigs,  it 
is  often  very  difficult  to  get  a  company  of 

126 


Make-Up— General  127 

amateurs  to  take  their  make-ups  seriously. 
They  have  trouble  in  understanding  that 
their  make-ups  will  either  contribute  a 
great  deal  to  the  general  artistic  value  of 
the  play,  or  will  go  far  toward  spoiling 
it  altogether.  We  all  recall  those  tradi- 
tional last  minute  scrambles,  when  one  or 
two  perspiring  and  desperate  volunteers 
try  to  make  up  a  whole  line  of  excited, 
nervous  actors, — when  spirit  gum  refuses 
to  stick,  when  the  hard  worked  rouge  pot 
gives  out,  when,  after  all,  it  is  perfectly 
and  discouragingly  obvious  that  the  Old 
Man  of  the  play,  in  spite  of  his  gray  wig 
and  weird  whiskers,  is  not  a  day  over 
twenty-five,  when — but  why  retail  more  of 
a  familiar  and  harrowing  experience? 

But  it  should  not  be  difficult  to  avoid  at 
least  the  more  obvious  mistakes  and  diffi- 
culties. Let  us  see  if  we  cannot  find  some 
general  principles  and  simple  directions, 
which  will  help  a  little  to  get  good  results. 


128       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

For  it  is  to  be  understood — is  it  not? — 
that  making  up  has  to  be  taken  rather 
seriously,  after  all. 

At  the  bottom  of  the  matter  lie  three 
considerations. 

In  the  first  place,  the  actor  appears  at  a 
distance  from  the  spectators.  In  a  theater 
seating  a  thousand  persons,  or  more,  the 
actor  is  anywhere  from  fifteen  to  fifty  feet 
away  from  his  audience.  Removed  in  this 
way,  he  is  to  remember  that  his  features 
look  insignificant  and  indistinct.  Profes- 
sional actors  and  actresses,  in  most  cases, 
have  well  marked,  rather  accentuated 
features — the  arch  of  the  eye  socket,  the 
spring  of  the  nose,  the  modeling  of  the 
chin,  and  the  lines  around  the  mouth,  are, 
in  the  case  of  practically  every  man  or 
woman  whom  nature  has  suited  for  the 
stage  physically,  remarkable  for  their 
boldness  and  purity.  "The  actor's  face" 
is  a  perfectly  recognized  type.     But  while 


Make-Up— General  129 

the  play  of  such  strongly  marked  features 
may  be  observable  enough  even  at  a  dis- 
tance, helped  as  it  is  by  trained  muscles, 
there  is  not  a  professional  living,  however 
well  endowed  in  this  particular,  who  does 
not  accentuate  by  every  means  in  the 
power  of  his  make-up  box,  those  traits  he 
may  possess.  How  much  more  careful 
then  must  the  amateur  be,  with  his  (usu- 
ally) more  softly  modeled  features,  to 
build  and  color  till  his  smile  and  scowl  are 
perfectly  apparent  to  the  backmost  rows 
in  the  house  ?  Here  again  we  have  to  note 
the  inevitable  slight  exaggeration  of  na- 
ture necessitated  by  stage  conditions. 

Furthermore,  not  only  does  the  actor  s 
distance  from  the  audience  affect  the  mat- 
ter of  make-up,  but  also  the  fact  that  he 
plays  in  a  direct  glare  of  artificial  light,  of 
a  character  and  intensity  very  different 
from  that  of  nature, — a  light  by  which  his 
natural    complexion    appears    pale    and 


130       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

pasty,  his  features  smaller  than  natural, 
and  his  eyes  sunken. 

It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  the  lighting 
system  obtaining  generally  in  the  theaters 
(though  a  tendency  is  at  work  to  change 
this)  brings  about  an  illumination  which 
frequently  completely  reverses  the  effect 
of  natural  lighting — bringing  shadows, 
that  is,  where  lights  exist  by  day.  The 
portions  of  the  face  naturally  shaded,  such 
as  the  space  between  the  eye  and  the  brow, 
the  underpart  of  the  nose,  below  the  chin 
and  jaw,  below  the  under  lip,  are  brought 
by  the  footlights  into  brilliant  relief,  while 
the  forehead,  bridge  of  the  nose,  cheek- 
bones, upper  lip  and  chin,  usually  the  best 
lighted  parts  of  the  face,  tend  on  the  stage 
to  become  shadowed.  The  footlights,  that 
is,  illuminate  from  below;  and  the  illumi- 
nation of  the  footlights  is  that  which 
mainly  controls  and  underlies  the  whole 
stage  system  of  lighting.     Only  the  intel- 


Make-Up — General  131 

ligent  use  of  paint  can  remedy  this  pal- 
pably absurd  condition. 

As  has  been  said,  perhaps  the  common- 
est fault  of  amateurs  in  this  regard  is  to 
use  too  little  make-up.  It  is  too  often  as- 
sumed that,  for  young  people,  all  that  is 
needed  is  a  dab  of  rouge,  a  line  of  black 
on  the  eyebrows,  a  little  powder,  and  a 
touch  of  scarlet  on  the  lips.  It  is  piously 
believed  by  the  inexperienced  that,  given  a 
gray  or  white  wig,  three  perpendicular 
lines  between  the  eyebrows,  three  more  at 
the  outer  corners  of  the  eyes,  two  more 
from  the  wings  of  the  nose  to  the  corners 
of  the  mouth,  and  one  across  the  forehead, 
will  give  a  perfect  illusion  of  old  age. 
The  frightful  and  unearthly  visages  con- 
trived for  character  and  comic  parts  by 
the  amateur  make-up-man  need  no  com- 
ment at  all ;  one  merely  shudders  recalling 
them.  What  happens  when  people  made 
up  in  this  sketchy  fashion  face  the  audi- 


132       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

ence?  However  pink  and  white  and 
pretty  the  girls  look  at  close  range,  in  the 
glare  of  the  stage  light  their  faces  become 
merely  red  and  white  masks;  their  eyes 
lose  all  brilliancy,  all  definition  of  outline, 
retire,  become  mere  black  dots ;  their  noses 
become  startlingly  retrousse;  the  whole 
facial  contour  becomes  disturbingly  un- 
natural. In  the  case  of  those  imperson- 
ating old  people,  such  hasty  tracings  as  we 
mention  above  give  no  illusion  of  wrinkles ; 
they  are  plainly  streaks  of  paint.  Too  lit- 
tle make-up  is  almost  worse  than  none  at 
all.     Its  only  use  is  to  tickle  the  audience. 

It  will  be  asked  immediately:  What 
requirements,  then,  shall  we  call  really  ob- 
ligatory in  this  matter  of  make-up? 

The  minimum  necessities,  both  of  ma- 
terials and  of  labor,  to  make  actors  look 
human,  and  in  character,  under  a  strange, 
fierce  light,  are  those  detailed  herewith. 
And  it  should  be  believed  that  even  the 


Make-Up — General  133 

simplest  amateur  play,  if  it  is  proposed  to 
make  it  at  all  worth  while,  will  need  every 
one  of  these  apparently  fussy  aids  to  a 
good  performance.  Amateur  actors  and 
managers  simply  must  realize  the  fact  that 
good  and  complete  make-ups  cannot  be 
improvised,  executed  hurriedly,  or  neg- 
lected in  any  least  detail. 

It  is  best,  of  course,  for  every  actor  to 
have  his  own  make-up  box;  a  slight  ex- 
penditure will  buy  enough  grease  paint 
and  other  necessities  for  many  a  play,  and 
the  stuff  will  not  deteriorate  when  stored. 
But  if  this  is  impracticable,  every  member 
of  the  cast  must  have  access  to  the  follow- 
ing supplies : 

Cold  cream 
Cocoa  butter 

Grease  paint,  blonde  flesh 
"       brunette  flesh 
"  "       yellowish  flesh 


134       Amateur  Stage  Directing 


Grease  paint, 

sunburn 

((           (< 

ochre 

((           (( 

white 

«          « 

gray 

«           « 

blue 

C(                       « 

carmine 

«               « 

crimson 

Lining  pencil 

Crape  hair 

Spirit  gum 

Powder  (white,  pink,  hrunette) 

Rouge 

Cheesecloth 

Powder  puff 

With  these  articles  spread  out  before 
him  conveniently,  the  amateur  should  be- 
gin his  task,  seated  if  possible  (for  the 
work  will  take  a  little  time) ,  before  a  mir- 
ror which  is  brilliantly  lighted.  If  pos- 
sible, these  make-up  mirrors  should  have 
the  electric  hght  bulbs  set  in  the  frames; 


Make-Up—Body  Color        135 

and  amber  bulbs  should  be  mingled  with 
the  white  ones  in  the  proportion  of  about 
one  in  three.  If  all  this  rigging  is  im- 
practicable, at  least  be  quite  sure  that  the 
mirror  gets  a  glare  of  light  from  some 
source  direct.  It  is  a  good  plan  for  women 
to  cover  their  hair  with  a  cap  of  some 
sort  when  they  make  up;  it  is  easier  to 
dress  the  hair  after  the  face  work  is  fin- 
ished. 

Rub  the  face  and  throat  thoroughly  and 
lightly  with  cold  cream,  which  will  make 
the  subsequent  application  of  the  grease 
paint  easier.  Wipe  off  any  excess  with 
soft  cheesecloth,  so  the  face  will  not  ap- 
pear shiny ;  and  it  is  sometimes  well,  at  this 
point,  to  apply  very  lightly  a  little  flesh 
colored  powder. 

BODY   COLOR 

Then  apply  the  grease  paint.  There  is 
a  very  wide  selection  possible  here,  as  the 


136       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

paint  is  made  in  colors  suitable  for  every 
kind  of  "body  color"  or  basic  complexion 
tint,  from  the  pale  pink-and-pearl  of  the 
young  blonde  to  the  ochreish  ivory  of  old 
age;  from  the  ruddy  tan  of  the  outdoor 
man  to  the  pasty  white  of  the  invalid. 
Choose  very  carefully,  for  this  application 
will  be  the  prevailing  color  of  the  skin. 
Lay  the  paint  on  in  wide  streaks,  heating 
the  stick  a  little,  if  necessary,  to  make  the 
paint  flow  easily  and  quickly;  then  with 
the  tips  of  the  fingers  gently  spread  and 
blend,  till  the  face,  ears,  eyelids,  and  neck 
are  completely  coated.  The  space  below 
and  behind  the  ears  is  often  neglected,  also 
the  upper  eyelid ;  so  have  good  care  in  this 
regard.  The  grease  paint  on,  dust  the 
face  over  again  with  some  powder. 

ROUGE 

Next  comes  whatever  red  you  wish  to 
apply.     It  will  be  seen  that  any  of  the 


Make-Up — Rouge  137. 

grease  paints,  even  the  ruddiest,  tend 
strongly  to  make  the  skin  look  yellowish, 
and  this,  for  some  complexions,  must  of 
course  be  in  a  measure  neutralized.  Let 
it  be  remembered  also  that,  in  nature,  the 
forehead  always  appears  lightest  in  color 
and  more  yellow,  than  any  other  part  of 
the  face;  that  the  lighter  reds  appear  on 
the  sides  of  the  nose,  just  below  the  cheek 
bones,  and  on  the  cheeks  above  the  line 
from  the  nose  to  the  corner  of  the  mouth ; 
that  the  heavier  tones  appear  lower  on  the 
face — on  the  jaws  and  around  the  chin. 
Just  under  the  eyes,  the  skin  has  often  a 
very  transparent,  pale  purplish  tone;  the 
ears  (in  health)  are  usually  redder  than 
other  parts  of  the  face.  In  general,  go 
carefully  in  the  matter  of  rouge ;  it  is  easy 
to  use  too  much  and  so  make  the  face  look 
patchy.  Use  just  enough  to  brighten  up 
the  prevailing  sallow  hue  of  the  grease 
paint;  and  apply  it  so  that  it  blends  into 


138       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

the  rest  of  the  face  color  imperceptibly. 
Be  very  careful  about  using  any  red  near 
the  eyes.  This  is  a  very  common  amateur 
fault.  The  rouge  is  applied  too  high  on 
the  face.  The  effect  of  this  is  to  make  the 
eyes  look  very  small;  and  it  gives  a 
curiously  distorted,  pinched  look,  hard  to 
define,  yet  j^ainful  to  look  at.  Lay  the 
rouge  mostly  on  the  lower  part  of  the 
cheeks.  An  old  and  fairly  reliable  guide 
in  the  matter  is  to  grin  as  wide  as  you 
can,  at  the  same  time  puckering  up  your 
eyes,  which  will  bring  your  cheeks  up  into 
high  relief.  Use  no  rouge  higher  than  the 
top  of  the  exaggerated  curve  of  the  cheeks 
thus  emphasized.  The  heavier  red  of  a 
man's  complexion  will  have  to  be  rendered 
by  more  grease  paint,  rather  than  with 
rouge,  which  is  too  delicate  and  transpar- 
ent a  material,  except  for  women  and 
young  people.  And  say  to  yourself  again 
and  again,  every  time  you  touch  the  rouge 


Make-Up— The  Lips  139 

box — "Most    amateurs   use   entirely   too 
much  of  this." 

THE   LIPS 

Next  make  up  the  hps.  If  you  wish 
to  retain  the  natural  shape  of  the  mouth, 
simply  cover  the  lips  to  their  outer  edges 
with  carmine,  with  a  touch  of  crimson  on 
the  upper  lip.  If  you  wish  to  improve  on 
nature,  draw  the  line  of  the  lips  as  the 
heart  and  taste  dictate,  remembering  only 
to  make  the  upper  lip  fuller  in  the  middle 
than  in  the  corners  and  to  color  it  a  little 
darker.  A  tiny  triangle  of  carmine  placed 
just  at  the  corners  of  the  mouth  and  above 
them  will  make  a  mouth  look  ready  to 
smile;  to  make  a  mouth  droop  at  the  cor- 
ners, or  to  give  the  effect  of  enlarging  it, 
continue  the  natural  downward  curve  of 
the  lips  with  a  little  carmine,  blue,  or 
brown.  A  pouting  expression  will  be 
helped  by  a  touch  of  blue  or  gray  just  in 


140       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

the  middle  under  the  lower  lip,  to  give  the 
effect  of  a  shadow. 

THE   EYES 

The  eyes  will  take  more  time  than  all 
the  rest  put  together.  Rememher  all  that 
has  been  said  as  to  their  importance;  that 
they  are  the  most  expressive  feature. 
This  implies  that  they  shall  be  given  good 
definition — they  must  be  framed,  as  it 
were;  their  natural  shaj)e  must  be  a  little 
accentuated;  for  special  purposes,  the 
shape  must  be  a  wee  bit  distorted  by  the 
deft  way  in  which  lines  are  drawn  about 
them.  Be  it  said  that  one  need  have  no 
fear  of  injuring  the  e\'es  in  any  way  by  the 
proper  use  of  grease  paint  and  lining 
pencils.  The  girls  who  drop  a  little  bella- 
donna in,  to  make  their  eyes  more  brilliant, 
are  of  course  taking  chances ;  but  the  aver- 
age amateur  can  use  all  the  paint  and  pains 
in  the  world  around  his  lids  and  lashes, 


Make-Up—The  Eyes  141 

and  suffer  nothing  but  a  lot  of  work  get- 
ting it  all  clean  again.  Probably  the  first 
task  in  connection  with  the  proper 
make-up  of  the  eyes  is  to  increase  their 
apparent  size.  This  is  best  done  by  care- 
fully blackening  the  upper  lashes  (not  the 
edge  of  the  lids,  be  it  understood)  ;  then 
by  continuing  a  little  the  natural  outward 
slope  of  the  upper  hd  with  a  hning  pencil, 
very  lightly  handled;  then  by  shadowing 
(with  gray  or  blue)  the  outer  and  inner 
curves  of  the  lower  lid,  very  delicately, 
with  a  faint  trace  of  black  on  the  line  of 
the  lower  lashes.  Place  a  small  but  very 
vivid  touch  of  brilliant  carmine  at  the 
inner  corner  of  the  eye.  At  the  highest 
part  of  the  curve  of  the  upper  lid,  just  un- 
der the  arch  of  the  eye  socket,  do  a  little 
more  shading  with  blue  or  gi-ay — the  point 
of  this  being  to  neutralize  the  effect  of  the 
footlights  which,  oddly  enough  bring  this 
naturally  shadowed  part  of  the  face  into 


142       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

the  highest  rehef.  Treat  the  eyebrows  as 
the  character  requn-es — dehcately  arched, 
fiercely  contracted,  ehminated  altogether. 
It  will  give  an  oddly  humorous  cast  to  a 
face,  oftentimes,  if  the  outer  ends  of  the 
eyebrows  are  slightly  elevated;  a  prevail- 
ing anxious  look  is  helx)ed  by  elevating  the 
iimer  ends  of  the  brows.  It  is  well  to  have 
in  mind  the  old  drawing  school  dictum  that 
the  shape  of  the  eye  socket  is,  on  last 
analysis,  a  triangle.  Shifting  the  apex  of 
this  triangle  a  trifle  to  one  side  or  the  other 
will  result  oftentimes  in  the  most  extraor- 
dinary changes  in  the  whole  cast  of  the 
countenance.  It  is  perhaps  unnecessary 
to  caution  the  amateur  about  getting  these 
lines  about  the  eye  as  close  to  it  as  is  hu- 
manly possible.  And,  once  more,  take 
plenty  of  time.  The  make-up  of  the  eyes 
is  perhaps  the  most  important  and  difficult 
of  all, — whether  you  wish  them  luminous 


Make-Up— The  Nose  143 

and  large,  or  mere  slits  ( for  which  do  none 
of  the  things  recommended  above),  or  to 
represent  illness  and  fatigue  (for  which 
use  a  bit  of  gray  or  blue  to  accentuate  the 
line  of  the  natural  hollow  below  the  eye) , 
or  to  help  out  the  general  effect  you  wish 
any  special  character  to  give.  Remember 
that  the  light  you  appear  in  is  very  bright, 
that  any  slips  or  imperfections  will  be  re- 
morselessly shown  up;  that  the  eyes  will 
give  immediately  the  first  suggestion  about 
the  character,  on  that  character's  first  en- 
trance. 

THE   NOSE 

To  alter  the  natural  shape  of  the  nose, 
use  the  putty  which  comes  for  the  purpose. 
This  can  be  molded  to  any  shape  between 
the  fingers,  and  is  to  be  applied  before  the 
grease  paint  is  put  on.  A  bold  line  of 
white  down  the  bridge  of  the  nose  will 
make  the  nose  look  straighter  and  longer. 


144       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

LINES   AND   WRINKLES 

Any  actor  playing  the  part  of  a  very 
old  person  ought  to  study  ver}^  carefully, 
from  life  or  from  photographs  or  other 
representations,  just  where  the  wrinkles 
and  lines  of  age  run,  and  what  is  their 
general  shape.  Remember  that  it  is  the 
look  of  the  throat  which  perhaps  best  be- 
trays age — the  prominence  of  the  heavy 
cords  and  muscles  there ;  and  the  knotted, 
bony  hands  of  the  veteran  must  also  be 
carefully  indicated.  Gray  or  blue,  very 
carefully  applied,  should  be  used  to  simu- 
late the  hollows  of  the  temples  and  the 
cheeks ;  and  take  great  care  that  these  hol- 
lows are  in  right  place  anatomically.  In 
drawing  all  wrinkles  or  other  lines,  re- 
member that  if  you  play  in  a  pinkish  or 
amber  light,  the  tracings  will  appear  espe- 
cially deep,  while  a  white  or  blue  light  will 
tend  to  soften  them-.     In  any  event,  use 


Make-Up—Wigs  145 

brown  or  blue  for  these  lines,  never  black. 
When  the  make-up  is  finished,  it  may  be 
found  necessary  to  dust  on  a  little  more 
flesh  colored  powder,  if  the  face  looks  at 
all  shiny. 

AS  TO   WIGS 

If  it  is  necessary  to  use  a  wig,  take  great 
pains  that  the  line  of  junction  across  the 
forehead  is  entirely  obliterated,  which  can 
usually  be  helped  by  carrying  the  base 
color  over  the  edge  of  the  wig.  Take 
great  pains  that  it  fits  snugly  around  the 
back  of  the  head  and  over  the  ears;  and 
dress  it  very  carefully  to  lie  smooth  and 
tight.  The  wigs  one  gets  from  most  cos- 
tumers  are  shockingly  ragged  and  long 
haired;  they  make  the  best  looking  hero 
appear  merely  comic.  One  cannot  take 
too  much  pains  in  selecting  wigs  that  shall 
fulfill  the  double  duty  of  suggesting  the 
character  and  fitting  the  actor  snugly. 


VII 

THE  STAGE  AND  THE  SCENERY 

The  disadvantages  under  which  most 
companies  of  amateurs  give  their  perform- 
ances are  so  many  and  so  formidable, 
that  one  often  wonders  how  they  attain  the 
success  they  often  do  attain.  Improvised 
stages,  ill  designed  and  ill  fitted  costumes, 
inappropriate  scener}^  very  bad  lighting 
— against  all  these  obstacles  the  amateur 
contends  blithefully.  Most  frequently  he 
simply  ignores  the  obstacles ;  and  perhaps 
this  is  a  mercy,  for  if  he  realized  his  handi- 
caps, he  might  not  run  at  all.  But  the  bet- 
ter way,  one  may  venture  to  think,  is 
frankly  to  recognize  the  difficulties  of  a 
mechanical  sort  in  the  way  of  the  manager ; 
to  learn  what  are  some  of  the  really  indis- 

146 


Stage  and  Scenery — Size        147 

pensable  requirements  in  the  matter  of 
scenic  investiture;  and  to  try  very  hard, 
for  the  sake  of  the  play,  to  hve  up  to  them. 

THE   DIMENSIONS   OF   THE   STAGE 

Most  amateur  plays  are  produced  on 
far  too  small  stages.  Perhaps  the  old 
fashion  of  "private  theatricals"  in  some- 
body's drawing  room  is  responsible  for 
the  continuance  of  the  habit  of  staging 
even  pretentious  plays,  oftentimes,  under 
conditions  of  space  which  are  really  im- 
possible. There  may  be  a  dozen  reasons  for 
this  convention;  but  there  are  a  hundi*ed 
better  reasons  for  breaking  with  it  at  every 
opportunity.  Schools  which  take  their 
dramatics  at  all  seriously  ought  to  use  the 
greatest  care,  in  building  new  auditoriums 
with  a  stage,  that  the  latter  is  something 
more  than  a  platform  suitable  for  a  con- 
cert or  an  address.  Unless  plays  are  to 
be  only  semi-successful  as  artistic  produc- 


148       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

tions,  tJie  actors  must  have  plenty  of  room. 
On  the  small  stages,  too  often  deemed  ap- 
propriate for  non-professional  players, 
there  is  quite  lacking  all  opportunity  for 
the  free  and  slightly  exaggerated  move- 
ment so  necessary  for  pictorial  action,  for 
using  the  wider  range  of  the  voice,  for 
handsome  grouping,  for  the  proper  isola- 
tion of  certain  actors  or  bits  of  action. 

With  no  wish  to  be  too  exacting,  one 
may  ask  that  the  stage  shall  measure  not 
less  than  twenty-five  feet  across  the  pro- 
scenium arch;  not  less  than  fifteen  feet 
from  the  line  of  the  drop  curtain  to  the 
scenery  closing  in  the  stage  at  the  rear 
(and  for  exterior  scenes  a  depth  of  twen- 
ty-five feet  is  very  desirable) ;  while  in 
height,  from  the  floor  to  the  flies,  the 
stage  should  measure  fourteen  feet,  at 
least.  It  should  be  understood  that  these 
dimensions  are  actually  considerably  less 
than   obtain    on   professional   stages    of 


Stage  and  Scenery — Size        149 

average  size;  and,  if  it  is  objected  that 
the  amateur  "feels  lost"  on  any  but  a 
small  stage,  the  answer  is  to  train  him 
to  feel  at  home  on  a  good  one.  Perhaps 
it  will  be  quite  impossible  to  get  these 
minimum  dimensions  for  some  stage  se- 
lected, or  imposed,  for  an  amateur  play. 
With  the  best  hopes  and  intentions  in  the 
world,  the  company  may  find  itself  con- 
strained to  a  small  space.  In  that  case, 
try  very  hard  to  contrive  as  much  depth 
and  height  as  possible.  Depth  will  give 
an  opportunity  for  free  movement,  will  ob- 
viate the  necessity  of  having  all  movement 
on  the  stage  practically  a  series  of  cross- 
ings from  one  side  to  the  other;  and,  in 
the  case  of  any  exterior  scene,  will  make  it 
possible,  through  proper  lighting,  to  give 
a  certain  illusion  of  distance  and  atmos- 
phere which  is  out  of  the  question  on  a 
shallow  stage.  Height  gives  a  sense  of 
space  and  airiness;  height  frames  the  pic- 


150       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

ture  at  the  top  with  a  good  clearance,  and 
in  good  proportion  above  the  heads  of  the 
people  in  the  composition. 

THE   SCENERY 

The  stage  of  fairly  small  size  does,  how- 
ever, offer  one  sole  attraction  to  those  wise 
enough  to  take  advantage  of  it.  Almost 
inevitably  a  cramped  space  will  impose  on 
the  manager  and  others  responsible  for 
scenery  and  accessories  the  practical  neces- 
sity of  setting  the  scene  simply. 

Simplicity!  If  every  amateur  stage 
manager  would  let  that  quality  dominate 
and  pervade  every  detail  of  his  scenic  in- 
vestiture, what  a  lot  would  be  gained! 
For  it  is  unquestionably  true  that  the  use 
of  simple  scenery — the  pursuit  of  the 
modern  ideal  of  the  best  minds  in  the 
theater — accomplishes  much  for  the  edu- 
cation in  taste  of  those  who  build  it,  and 
of  those  who  look  at  it  from  the  audience. 


Stage  and  Scenery — Simplicity     151 

It  is  extremely  difficult  to  "make  come 
right" ;  there  is  required  to  decide  its  color, 
texture,  and  lighting,  a  sound  artistic  per- 
ception ;  much  of  the  theory  and  history  of 
decorative  design  has  to  be  learned  before 
a  stage  setting  can  be  made  exactly  ap- 
propriate to  the  period,  place,  and  char- 
acter of  the  play  for  which  it  is  con- 
structed. Modern  scenery  is  called 
"simple"  only  because  it  departs  rather 
radically  from  the  fussily  elaborate  and 
often  horribly  designed  scenery  of  other 
(and  present  days) . 

The  ideal  of  the  scene  painter  and 
builder  of  the  new  school  is,  in  a  word,  that 
stage  scenery  shall  not  try  to  be  exactly 
representative,  but  vitally  suggestive.  It 
is  believed  that  scenery  and  settings  have 
accomplished  their  proper  purposes  when 

(1)  they  furnish  a  suitable  and  beautiful 
and  harmonious  background  of  color,  and 

(2)  they  suggest  unerringly,  but  with  no 


152       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

superfluity  of  detail,  the  character  of  the 
surroundings  in  which  the  action  of 
the  play  transpires.  Until  very  recently 
artists  and  carpenters  have  followed  that 
line  of  endeavor  which  aims  to  make 
scenery  and  accessories  as  true  to  life  as 
possible;  they  have  faithfully  tried  to 
create  an  illusion  of  actual,  physical  life. 
Every  ingenious  device  of  lighting,  all  the 
trained  skill,  all  the  talent  of  artists,  his- 
torical students,  and  craftsmen,  have  been 
employed  to  make  a  stage  setting  look  real. 
And  though  much  has  been  accomplished 
which  is  both  beautiful  and  wonderful,  the 
fact  remains  that  these  artists  have  never 
quite  fulfilled  their  aims.  Save  as  they 
have  pictured  certain  interiors  and  made 
them  look  solid  and  substantial,  they  have 
produced  effects,  when  the  very  best  has 
been  done,  which  are  far  indeed  from  de- 
picting even  an  approach  to  reality.  Of 
illusion  there  is  very  little ;  most  often  it  is 


Stage  and  Scenery — Simplicity     153 

absent  altogether.  The  counterfeit  of 
wall  or  tree  or  distant  landscape,  so  long 
supplied  by  painted  surfaces  of  lath  and 
canvas  seems,  after  all,  a  vain  thing,  rather 
childish,  a  convention  which  one  wonders 
has  been  so  long  accepted.  An  awakened 
and  steadily  broadening  sense  of  truth  and 
fitness  in  the  art  of  the  theater,  a  feeling 
that  a  different  set  of  conventions  will 
bring  setting  and  action  into  truer  rela- 
tions, have  made  possible  abroad  the  ex- 
periments of  Craig,  Bakst,  Reinhardt, 
Barker,  and  the  other  prophets  of  the  new 
gospel. 

A  little  has  been  tried  here  in  America. 
Presently  we  shall  have  much  more  of 
the  new  scenery — in  those  centers  and 
on  those  stages  where  taste  dominates, 
and  novelty  and  truth  are  thought  worth 
endeavoring  after.  We  shall  have  sets  of 
scenery  which  are  stripped  of  all  frippery 
and  pseudo-reality,  which  are  reduced  to 


154       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

the  task  of  supplying  a  beautiful  color  set- 
ting— gorgeous  and  fantastic,  sober  and 
cool,  as  the  character  of  the  play  and  the 
scene  may  demand.  Instead  of  a  throng 
of  objects  on  the  stage,  in  the  way  of 
furniture  and  furnishings,  which  were  for- 
merly placed  there  laboriously  with  the 
idea  that  such  things  made  the  scene  look 
life-like  (even  though  the  walls  waved  in 
the  draughts),  we  shall  have  very  few 
properties,  and  these  all  perfectly  designed 
to  suggest  by  their  shape  and  color  the 
place  and  the  time  and  the  nature  of  the 
play,  as  well  as  possessing  an  intrinsic  in- 
terest of  their  own. 

Applying  theory  to  practice,  one  will 
ask  what  can  be  done,  by  the  hard  pressed 
amateur,  with  the  battered  and  frayed  sets 
of  stock  scenery,  of  garish  color  and 
atrocious  design,  which  are  now  dragged 
forth  to  set  the  interior  scenes  alleged 
to   represent   a   drawing  room,   cottage, 


Stage  and  Scenery — Interiors     155 

boudoir,  office  or  castle?  If  it  is  agreed 
that  we  are  to  be  discontented  with  the 
scenery  and  settings  usually  supplied  ama- 
teur productions,  because  these  are  usually 
exceedingly  ugly,  because  they  create  no 
illusion,  because  they  often  jar  badly  with 
the  general  spirit  and  content  of  the  play, 
how  can  we  proceed  to  adapt  them? 
Lacking  a  designer  of  original  scenery, 
lacking  the  means  of  building  it,  can  we 
make  anything  at  all  out  of  the  material  at 
hand? 

Well,  let  us  see.  Certainly,  any  re- 
sponse on  the  part  of  the  amateur  to  the 
call  of  the  newer  teachers  in  matters  the- 
atrical is  something  to  be  encouraged  in 
every  way. 

INTERIORS 

Let  us  consider  what  can  be  done  with 
interior  settings,  since  these  form  by  far 
the  largest  part  of  the  scenes  played  by 


156       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

amateurs.  Not  hurrying  too  fast,  let  us 
suppose  that  for  a  while  to  come,  amateurs 
will  be  constrained  more  or  less  to  follow 
established  custom,  and  try  for  the  look  of 
reality,  for  representation.  The  very  fact 
that  they  have  to  use  the  frames  and 
"flats"  and  "borders"  already  in  stock  will 
keep  most  companies  from  trying  Gordon 
Craig  or  Bakst  effects.  And  so,  granting 
this,  it  should  be  said  that  interiors  may  be 
helped  greatly  to  taking  on  the  look  of 
reality  by  careful  attention  to  the  building 
of  the  doors  and  windows.  Probably  the 
illusion  of  solid  construction  is  destroyed 
most  often,  in  interiors,  by  the  obvious 
flimsiness  of  the  lath-and-canvas  doors  and 
the  painted  door  frames.  Now  at  very 
small  expense,  you  can  have  a  light  wooden 
frame  built  into  each  doorway  opening,  in 
which  a  genuine  wooden  door  can  be  hung, 
with  all  its  gear  of  hinges,  knob,  latch,  and 
lock    complete, — a    door    that    can    be 


Stage  and  Scenery — Interiors     157 

slammed  noisily,  a  door  which  opens  prop- 
erly. Any  house-wrecking  firm  or  dealer 
in  second-hand  building  materials  can  sup- 
ply such  doors ;  indeed,  nearly  every  house- 
hold has  an  old  one  collecting  dust  in  attic 
or  cellar.  And  the  slight  expense  in- 
volved in  having  it  painted,  fitted,  and 
hung,  is  more  than  justified  by  the  real 
value  such  a  fixture  has  for  all  who  desire 
their  stage  settings  to  be  decently  ade- 
quate. In  the  matter  of  windows,  it  is 
well  to  have  weighted  sashes,  properly  ar- 
ranged to  open  and  shut,  and  hung  in  a 
good  solid  frame.  The  frames,  in  both 
cases,  will  steady  the  whole  wall  of  scenery, 
and  help  to  prevent  its  flapping  and  shak- 
ing. Whenever  possible,  be  sure  to  use  a 
solid  ceiling  instead  of  the  rows  of  drop 
borders  commonly  substituted.  This  will 
not  only  "look  better,"  but  will  act  as  a 
kind  of  sounding  board  for  the  voices  of 
the  actors.     It  is  hardly  necessary,  in  this 


158       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

day,  to  insist  that  room  walls  shall  be  made 
of  "flats"  of  scenery  joined  at  the  edges, 
and  built  all  round  the  stage  so  as  to  box 
it  in  completely.  All  interiors  to-day  are 
so  constructed;  the  old-fashioned  "wings" 
are  rarely  seen.  For  the  sake  of  breaking 
the  monotony  of  straight  walls  along  the 
sides,  it  is  well  to  cut  off  the  upper  corners 
where  they  meet  the  rear  wall  diagonally, 
if  possible.  This  will  contract  the  stage 
a  little,  but  is  worth  trying,  if  only  for  the 
sake  of  using  up  two  useless  bits  of  space. 
Similarly,  it  is  not  a  bad  idea  to  build  a 
little  projection  in  the  side  walls  about 
half  way  back,  the  rear  part  of  the  room 
represented  being  thus  a  little  narrower 
than  that  part  down  in  front.  But  neither 
of  these  devices  is  to  be  employed  unless 
permitted  by  the  proper  architectural  con- 
struction of  such  a  room  as  is  being  repre- 
sented. Remember,  in  setting  your  stage, 
that  the  passage  from  the  scene  to  the 


Stage  and  Scenery — Interiors     159 

space  behind  the  scenery  which  leads  off 
just  behind  the  drop  curtain  and  in  front 
of  the  sides,  is  never  available  as  an  exit. 
Remember  that  every  door  and  window 
must  be  appropriately  "backed,"  with  some 
scenery  which  will  carry  out  the  idea  of 
another  room,  a  terrace,  a  view,  or  of  the 
naturally  adjacent  space  whatever  it  is. 
Attention  is  necessary  here,  to  judge  from 
the  stage  setting  of  many  amateur  plays. 
Doors  should  be  a  little  larger  than  the 
stock  sizes  put  in  dwelling  houses  gener- 
ally, both  in  height  and  width,  whenever 
possible. 

As  to  the  treatment  of  the  walls,  it  is 
possible  that  nothing  need  be  done  at  all. 
With  access  to  a  good  theatrical  store- 
house, and  plenty  of  money  to  pay  charges, 
you  may  be  able  to  rent  scenery  which  has 
been  painted  by  somebody  with  taste  and 
skill,  and  therefore  sufficient.  But  if  you 
have  to  use  the  scenery  already  on  hand  in 


160       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

the  to^vn  hall,  the  local  "opera  house,"  or 
the  school,  as  is  the  case  with  most  ama- 
teurs, some  radical  treatment  will  have  to 
be  devised  to  make  it  even  tolerable. 
Probably  it  is  best  to  cover  all  its  ugliness 
and  dinginess  as  quickly  as  you  can.  The 
owner  probably  will  not  let  you  paint  it 
anew,  so  use  burlap,  silkalene,  unbleached 
cotton,  or  any  cheap  material,  and  tack  it 
smoothly  to  the  flats,  or  if  the  character 
of  the  i)lay  will  allow  it,  drape  the  material 
in  soft  perpendicular  folds.  The  ma- 
terial must  be  dyed  the  color  your  taste 
decrees  as  most  suitable  to  provide  a  back- 
ground for  your  scene — gay,  somber, 
drab,  or  brilliant,  a  color  which  will  echo 
and  accentuate  the  general  tone  of  the 
whole  play.  Only  a  word  of  caution  is 
necessary  here.  Avoid  red,  since  this  is 
unrestf ul  and  too  strong  a  color ;  avoid  any 
bright  color  which  will  obtrude  itself  un- 
duly ;  avoid  blue,  since  this  is  a  very  tricky 


Stage  and  Scenery — Exteriors     161 

color  to  manage  by  artificial  and  changing 
light.  Generally  speaking,  the  various 
tones  of  brown  or  gray  will  prove  most 
satisfactory  for  this  background  of 
scenery.  A  very  simple  stencil  design, 
sparingly  used  in  the  frieze  or  about  the 
doors  and  v»^indows,  will  supply  all  neces- 
sary decoration.  Windows  and  doors,  in 
all  domestic  interiors,  may  have  curtains 
of  appropriate  material,  rich  or  simple,  but 
always  of  the  plainest  pattern  and  weave. 
These  will  supplement  and  contrast  with 
the  prevailing  tone  of  the  walls,  and  have 
a  certain  decorative  value  of  their  own. 

EXTERIOR   SCENES 

Thus,  the  handling  of  interiors  is  com- 
paratively simple.  It  reduces  itself 
chiefly  to  an  intelligent  effort  to  produce 
an  effect  of  simplicity,  unobtrusiveness, 
and  appropriate  color.  But  when  one  is 
confronted  with  the  problem  of  designing 


162       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

and  executing  exterior  scenes,  one  meets 
a  problem  which  the  very  greatest  modern 
stage  designers  and  craftsmen  have  not 
yet  solved  to  their  own  satisfaction.  In- 
telligent opinion  of  all  shades  is  agreed 
that  the  best  efforts  to  produce  a  success- 
ful illusion  of  natural  landscape,  with  the 
light,  color,  atmosphere,  and  texture  all 
rendered  faithfully, — a  landscape  which 
composes  at  all  with  the  human  element 
and  action  represented  b}^  the  actors,  have 
practically  failed.  Beautiful  effects  of 
light  and  color  abound;  but,  when  all  is 
done,  the  forest,  desert,  street,  garden, 
orchard,  or  seacoast,  remain  palpably 
paint,  canvas,  painer  mache,  and  plaster. 
Long  ago  people  agreed  to  believe  that  for 
the  purpose  of  the  theater  this  counterfeit 
should  be  accepted;  and  the  toil  of  hun- 
dreds of  skillful  men  has  been  exj^ended  to 
make  the  counterfeit  appear,  each  year,  a 
bit  more  like  the  real  thing.     But  behold  a 


Stage  and  Scenery — Exteriors    163 

generation  which  says  that  it  will  no  longer 
accept  or  even  find  curious  and  interesting 
even  the  cleverest  substitute.  A  public  is 
growing  up  to  sa}^:  "Away  with  all  this 
painful  and  hopeless  struggle  to  make 
paint  and  plaster  pass  for  the  living 
tree  and  the  ancient  rock.  Let  us  end  a 
deception  which  deceives  nobody.  Let  us 
really  'make  believe.'  Let  us  use  our 
imagination  a  little."  The  most  keenly 
active  and  intelligent  managers  have  be- 
gun, as  everybody  knows,  to  work  along 
this  line  in  their  designs  and  construction. 
With  great  simplicity,  but  with  bold  draw- 
ing, definite  effects  of  light,  and  a  few 
carefully  chosen  constructed  shapes,  they 
suggest  the  locality  of  an  act.  They  use 
symbols  only.  They  give  just  enough  to 
supply  decoration,  and  to  let  the  imagina- 
tion play  freely.  If  one  lets  himself  re- 
call, say,  those  features  of  the  Mohamme- 
dan city  he  has  seen  or  dreamed  of,  how 


164       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

much,  or  how  very  httle,  flashes  up  from 
the  welter  of  confused  impressions  and 
half -recollections  ?  A  white  wall,  a  min- 
aret, an  oddly  shaped  arch,  a  blazing 
sky.  A  few  things,  clear  and  definite, 
typical  and  suggestive — only  essential 
things — compose  this  or  anj'^  other  recol- 
lected scene,  when  first  it  flashes  back  to 
one.  And  it  is  on  the  basis  of  this  trutli 
that  the  new  school  proceeds.  Success  is 
not  yet  complete ;  the  laws  and  the  rules  of 
this  new  method  of  stage  decoration  are 
not  yet  established  or  formulated.  Per- 
haps, as  yet,  it  is  little  more  than  an  ideal. 
But,  unquestionably,  it  proceeds  on  right 
lines;  and  it  is  a  theory  of  scene-making 
with  which  amateurs  will  j^resently  have  to 
reckon.  At  least  one  enterprising  and 
courageous  amateur  manager  has  already 
made  some  interesting  and  valuable  ex- 
periments, has  achieved  also  some  beauti- 
ful effects,  in  this  line  of  endeavor.     De- 


Stage  and  Scenery — Costumes     165 

siring  once,  for  example,  to  set  the  stage  to 
represent  a  garden,  he  quite  discarded  the 
scenery  supphed  him  of  the  conventional 
sort,  and  set  up  merely  a  background 
painted  in  the  cool  colors  of  a  northern 
sky,  against  which  he  placed  bold  groups 
of  native  cedars,  with  screens  of  vines  to 
mask  the  entrances  at  right  and  left,  with 
a  wall  fountain  as  the  center  of  interest. 
And  the  scene  possessed  vigorous  char- 
acter and  great  charm,  properly  lighted. 
One  cannot  too  strongly  recommend  the 
amateur  generally  to  make  experiments  in 
stage  decoration  and  suggestive  or  sym- 
bolic setting,  of  a  like  sort.  Effort  of  that 
sort  will  prove  a  large  part  of  the  edu- 
cative value  of  any  active  work  in  the 
drama  or  the  theater. 

COSTUMES 

Consideration  of  the  problem  of  cos- 
tuming a  i)lay  belongs  in  this  part  of  the 


166       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

little  book,  because  the  dresses  and  accou- 
terments  of  the  players  should  always  be 
designed  and  chosen  in  connection  with  the 
design  and  color  of  the  scenery.  Pro- 
jected against  the  quiet  background,  they 
become  very  important  as  lending  the 
brightest  notes  of  color  on  the  scene. 

Does  it  appear  like  an  argument  sup- 
porting the  obvious  to  insist  that  stage  cos- 
tumes shall  be  both  correct  and  beautiful? 
The  professional  stage  is  hardly  open  to 
any  general  criticism  on  this  score.  The 
efforts  of  the  artist  and  the  historical 
scholar  have  been  combined  again  and 
again  to  produce  effects  in  this  depart- 
ment which  are  beyond  all  criticism.  But 
the  hapless  amateur,  once  more  the  victim 
of  adverse  conditions,  seems  almost  com- 
pelled by  an  irresistible  fate  to  commit 
blunders  in  the  matter  of  costume  which 
are  painful  when  they  are  not  laughable. 
Laughable,  because  so  very  often  a  man's 


stage  and  Scenery — Costumes     167 

costume  makes  him  look  the  ass  he  feels 
himself  to  be;  painful,  because  they  are 
usually  selected  from  a  costumer's  stock 
at  that  worthy's  confident  direction,  and  so 
are  too  often  wholly  incorrect  in  design, 
shabby  and  tawdry  in  appearance. 

A  very  serious  effort  should  be  made  to 
obviate  all  this ;  to  make  the  costuming  of 
a  play  one  of  its  very  best  features.  Cos- 
tumes should  be  (1)  correct  in  cut  and 
color  for  the  period  or  the  character  they 
are  intended  for;  (2)  properly  fitted  and 
adjusted;  (3)  carefully  considered  in  re- 
gard to  their  mutual  values  as  color. 
When  all  these  points  have  been  looked 
after,  what  genuine  enjoyment  costumes 
give!  How  satisfied  the  actors  are! 
How  beautifully  the  dresses  decorate  the 
stage!  Best  of  all,  perhaps,  from  one 
point  of  view,  any  well  costumed  amateur 
play  means  hours  of  real  enjoyment  and 
worth-while   study   over  the   fascinating 


168       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

books  of  historical  costume  and  design  in 
the  libraries  and  the  pictures  in  the  gal- 
leries. In  the  books  about  former  days 
and  ways,  in  the  pictures  of  old  time  peo- 
ple, one  makes  the  oddest  and  most  pleas- 
ant discoveries,  one  begins  most  charming 
acquaintances;  one  gets  a  store  of  quaint 
knowledge  of  the  clothes,  the  fal-lals,  the 
habits,  tastes,  and  whims,  of  many  ancient 
worthies  and  gallants  all  interesting,  all 
picturesque. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  what  may 
appear  very  small  defects  and  inconsisten- 
cies in  the  di'essing  room,  when  the  costume 
is  being  tried  on,  will  become  grossly  ap- 
parent and  j)erhaps  a  sure  source  of  mirth 
or  grief  to  the  audience,  when  paraded  in 
the  glare  of  the  foothghts.  Let  us  recall 
two  or  three  of  the  commonest  lapses  of 
this  sort. 

A  very  common  trouble  is  that  rented 
amateur  costumes  are  too  small,  with  too 


Stage  and  Scenery — Costumes     169 

short  sleeves,  or  too  narrow  shoulders,  or 
dangerous  to  sit  down  in.  Be  sure  that 
any  error  of  this  sort  is  corrected  early. 
If  the  actor  is  uncomfortable  and  un- 
happy, good-by  to  any  thought  of  success 
in  his  part. 

Another  frequent  blemish  on  an  other- 
wise satisfactory  costume  is  the  introduc- 
tion of  some  modern  detail — using  costume 
here  in  the  sense  of  an  old  time  dress 
or  habit.  Men  will  very  commonly,  and 
with  disastrous  effect,  wear  an  everyday 
collar  inside  the  starched  ruff  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan age,  inside  the  falHng  collar  of 
the  Puritan,  the  elaborately  folded  "steen- 
kirk"  of  the  Cavalier,  the  tall  neck- 
bands of  the  eighteenth  century,  or  the 
satin  stock  of  later  years.  They  will  wear 
a  collar  of  unmilitary  cut  with  a  uniform. 
They  will  retain  a  beard  or  a  mustache, 
when  playing  a  character  in  the  age  of 
smooth  faces.     Both  men  and  women  are 


170       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

let  be  careless  as  to  the  kind  of  shoes 
they  wear  in  costume  plays,  though  any  in- 
consistency or  anachronism  in  one's  foot 
gear,  for  some  reason  or  other,  is  espe- 
cially apparent  on  the  stage  and  quite  de- 
structive of  all  proper  effect.  Select  the 
shoes  for  any  costume  play — cothurn, 
buskin,  sandal,  boot,  or  slipper,  with  the 
utmost  care.  Modern  shoes,  however 
flimsily  disguised  with  a  false  top  or  a 
broad  buckle,  simply  will  not  do. 

Minor  slips,  which  can  and  must  be  cor- 
rected, involve  an  ignorance  of  or  a  care- 
lessness about  the  conventional  way  of 
wearing  certain  kinds  of  clothes.  Mili- 
tary uniform,  ecclesiastical  vestments, 
court  dress,  servants'  livery,  cowboys' 
neckerchiefs,  peasant  dress, — these  cos- 
tumes or  parts  of  costume,  to  cite  only  a 
few  familiar  examples,  are  all  worn  ac- 
cording to  fixed  regulations  or  established 
custom;  and  so  they  must  be  worn  on  the 


Stage  and  Scenery — Costumes     171 

stage.  Carelessness  here  will  rob  the  play 
of  a  special  quality  which  no  other  virtue 
can  quite  replace.  Fidelity  means  con- 
versely an  added  and  a  very  real  charm. 
It  will  give  an  actor  a  certain  feeling  of 
"being  more  in  the  part,"  also,  if  he  feels 
that  his  costume  is  absolutely  correct  and 
suitable,  as  well  as  easy  and  comforta- 
ble. A  good  costume  will  often  give 
an  actor  just  the  extra  zest  and  "zip," 
which  his  work  at  rehearsal  has  somehow 
lacked. 

If  it  is  intended  to  make  the  costumes 
for  a  play  in  home  workshops — which  has 
both  decided  advantages  and  obvious 
perils,  the  makers  should  be  quite  sure  that 
they  have  excellent  patterns  to  go  by,  and 
they  must  be  carefully  directed  by  one  re- 
sponsible supervisor  to  prevent  any  inde- 
pendent judgment  in  the  matter  of  colors. 
It  should  be  remembered  also  that  very 
expensive  materials  are  usually  wasted. 


172       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

The  stage  light  is  such,  and  the  distance  be- 
tween the  actor  and  the  audience  is  so  con- 
siderable, that  substitute  materials  are 
perfectly  allowable,  and  much  to  be  en- 
couraged. All  that  is  necessary  to  re- 
member is  that,  in  using  a  substitute  for 
velvet,  satin,  brocade,  leather,  fur,  or  any 
other  costly  stuff,  be  sure  ( 1 )  that  the  sub- 
stitute, when  draped,  will  fall  into  the  same 
folds  and  take  the  same  lights,  as  the 
original;  (2)  that  its  general  character,  as 
a  textile,  is  very  similar  to  the  more  ex- 
pensive weave. 

THE    LIGHTS 

The  relative  values,  and  the  commoner 
functions,  of  the  various  sets  of  lights  on 
the  stage,  must  be  thoroughly  understood 
by  the  stage  manager ;  and  while  the  ama- 
teur stage  can  rarely  enjoy  the  advantages 
of  the  splendid  equipment  of  the  better 
modern  theaters,  it  should  be  the  resolve 


Stage  and  Scenery — Lights      173 

of  everybody  responsible  for  the  produc- 
tion of  the  amateur  play  that  it  be  given 
under  as  good  conditions  of  lighting  as  is 
in  any  way  possible.  Do  not  economize  on 
the  electrician.  Get  him  to  install  just  as 
much  of  a  complete  system  as  you  can  pos- 
sibly manage,  if  only  for  a  very  few  per- 
formances, if  you  have  at  heart  the  real 
success  of  your  play.  And  arrange  for  a 
great  many  rehearsals  of  the  general  and 
special  hghting  arrangements,  so  that  on 
the  evening  of  the  play,  there  will  be  no 
awkward  hitches,  no  possibility  of  the  sun 
rising,  or  the  firelight  beginning  to  glow, 
some  minutes  too  soon  or  too  late. 

It  is  thought  well  here  to  enumerate  the 
various  conventional  parts  of  the  stage 
lighting  system,  as  we  have  it  in  all  the 
good  theaters,  with  the  idea  that,  if  it  can- 
not be  adopted  in  its  entirety,  at  least  the 
most  necessary  parts  thereof  can  be  ar- 
ranged for. 


174       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

Under  the  usual  plan,  the  direct  illumi- 
nation of  the  stage  is  provided  by  the  foot- 
lights, aided  more  or  less  by  the  spot  lights. 
The  footlights  are  set  along  the  front 
of  the  stage,  outside  the  drop  cur- 
tain, the  full  width  of  the  proscenium, 
usually  in  a  shallow  trough  so  that  their 
dazzle  will  be  screened  from  the  eyes  of  the 
audience.  Ideally,  the  footlights  are  ar- 
ranged in  three  banks,  each  of  a  different 
color  (white,  amber,  blue),  each  with  its 
own  switch  and  dimmer,  for  ease  in 
manipulation.  But  as  such  elaboration 
will  hardly  be  possible  for  school  or  dra- 
matic club  uses,  it  will  be  enough  if  there  is 
provided  a  continuous  line  of  bulbs,  set 
the  width  of  the  stage,  spaced  about  eight 
inches  on  centers,  amber  bulbs  alternating 
with  the  white  in  the  proportion  of  about 
one  in  three.  This  will  give  a  warm  but 
not  too  garish  a  light.  If  the  play  de- 
mands a  moonlight  effect,  or  any  cold  light, 


Stage  and  Scenery — Lights      175 

it  will  be  necessary  to  employ  blue  bulbs 
mingled  with  the  white,  and  the  amber 
bulbs  must  be  switched  off  when  the  blue 
are  being  used.  The  spotligJit,  placed  in 
the  rear  of  the  house,  is  intended  to  throw 
a  special  illumination,  of  some  particular 
color,  on  the  whole  stage  or  any  part  of  it, 
or  on  some  special  actor.  Often  absurdly 
abused,  the  spotlight  can  be  made  very  im- 
portant indeed,  by  producing  delicate 
effects  of  color  and  warmth,  by  giving 
the  actor  or  the  bit  of  action  a  necessary 
momentary  prominence.  When  a  whole 
battery  of  spotlights  is  used,  as  in  a  big 
theater,  it  is  often  possible  for  a  capable 
manager  to  devise  for  every  important 
actor  his  own  special,  and  changing  nuaiice 
of  color  and  degree  of  illmnination — the 
light  in  which  he  plays  subtly  and  imper- 
ceptibly seconding  and  echoing  the  general 
meaning  of  the  character  he  impersonates. 
One  spotlight,  however,  should  always  be 


176       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

made  available  for  a  good  amateur  play,  if 
more  than  one  is  out  of  the  question. 

The  direct  and  vivid  illumination  cast  by 
the  "foots"  and  the  "spot"  vrould  cast  the 
shadows  of  the  actors  against  the  scenery, 
were  it  not  counteracted.  This  is  pro- 
vided for  by  the  border  lights,  an  abso- 
lutely essential  feature  of  even  the  simplest 
equipment.  Set  in  rows,  each  about  half 
the  width  of  the  stage,  just  back  of  the  top 
of  the  proscenium  arch  and  behind  each  of 
the  flies  or  drop  borders,  with  brilliant  re- 
flectors, the  border  lights  must  be  kept  in 
very  delicate  balance  with  the  footlights. 
Too  strong  or  too  feeble  an  overhead  light 
will  result  in  curious  shadows  and  fore- 
shortenings  on  the  stage. 

If  it  is  desired  to  illuminate  special  re- 
stricted areas  of  the  stage  from  the  sides, 
recourse  is  commonly  had  to  the  so-called 
bunch  lights.  These  are  not  installed  as 
fixtures,  but  are  set  on  standards  and  can 


Stage  and  Scenery — Lights      177 

be  moved  about  as  necessary,  connected  up 
with  plugs  in  the  floor  of  the  stage  back  of 
the  scenery.  They  are  used  to  produce  ef- 
fects of  sunrise  or  sunset,  of  moonhght,  of 
firehght  from  a  hearth,  for  instance.  The 
changing  colors  often  necessary  in  this 
kind  of  illumination  are  produced  from 
the  bunch  lights  by  passing  films  of  gela- 
tine colored  in  reds,  yellows,  blues,  or 
violet  tones,  before  a  flame  of  carbon  or 
calcium. 

Strip  lights  are  short  sections  of  bulbs, 
detachable  and  capable  of  being  placed  in 
any  part  of  the  lighting  system,  to  produce 
an  intensified  or  special  illumination. 

Remember,  in  general,  that  all  white 
bulbs  will  make  a  very  garish  light.  It  is 
safe  as  a  rule  to  tone  down  this  white  glare 
with  a  proportion  of  amber  colored  bulbs, 
especially  for  interior  scenes.  The  bor- 
der lights,  however,  can  safely  be  left  all 
white. 


178       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

•  If  a  play  has  to  be  given  with  the  very 
strictest  economy  and  under  conditions 
which  make  any  elaborate  installation  of 
lights  impossible,  the  management  must 
provide  as  the  minimum  requirement  (1) 
a  row  of  footlights,  running  the  entire 
width  of  the  proscenium  arch,  with  a  re- 
flector of  white  painted  tin;  (2)  strips  of 
border  lights,  with  bright  reflectors,  behind 
the  top  of  the  proscenium  and  behind  each 
piece  of  scenery  suspended  from  above, 
and  behind  each  "wing"  or  border,  if  this 
arrangement  of  scenery  is  used,  instead  of 
a  boxed-in  set.  Footlights  alone  will 
never  do;  (3)  a  "dimmer,"  by  which  the 
intensity  of  the  illumination  can  be  con- 
trolled by  handling  a  switch. 


"back  stage" 


The  following  is  a  list  of  miscellaneous 
hints  and  cautions  intended  for  those  very 


Stage  and  Scenery — General     179 

important  personages,  the  stage  carpenter 
and  the  proj^erty  man.  They  are  in- 
tended to  cover  some  of  the  commoner 
problems  arising  out  of  the  setting  of  the 
stage  and  the  needs  of  the  action  in  most 
plays. 

Doors  in  scenery  are  made  convention- 
ally to  swing  invi^ard,  toward  the  stage. 
This  arrangement  has  become  established, 
possibly,  from  the  belief  that  it  affords  the 
best  means  for  emphatic  and  effective  exits 
and  entrances. 

Window  glass  can  be  simulated  by 
sheets  of  the  galvanized  meshed  material 
used  in  making  screen  doors,  cut  to  the 
proper  sizes.  Be  sure  that  it  is  bright  and 
new;  old  screening  is  useless. 

As  far  as  possible,  avoid  the  use  of  pic- 
tures on  the  walls  of  interior  sets.  They 
are  rarely  effective  as  a  decoration,  looking 
"spotty"  and  bad  in  color,  and  are  a  great 


180       Ajjiateur  Stage  Directing 

nuisance  to  handle  quickly  in  shifting 
scenes. 

If  the  action  of  the  play  calls  for  a  mir- 
ror^ and  this  must  be  hung  in  a  place  where 
it  will  reflect  the  audience,  place  a  sheet  of 
tin  or  zinc  over  its  face. 

Use  no  chairs  or  other  seats  less  than  17 
inches  off  the  floor.  Lower  seats  are  hard 
to  get  into,  and  worse  to  leave. 

Push  buttons  and  electric  switches 
should  be  placed  in  the  wall  about  shoul- 
der high.  In  this  way  the  actor  can  reach 
and  touch  them  with  a  graceful  rather  than 
an  ungraceful  gesture. 

Always  cover  the  stage  with  a  heavy 
crash  or  tarpaulin,  laid  perfectly  smooth, 
of  any  dull  neutral  color  for  interiors,  of  a 
brownish  green  for  exteriors. 

Thunder,  by  a  venerable  convention, 
may  still  be  simulated  (at  least  on  the 
amateur  stage)  by  shaking  a  piece  of 
sheet   iron.     Lightning ^  if  the   theater's 


Stage  and  Scenery — General     181 

equipment  is  meager,  can  be  approximated 
by  winking  high  power  tungsten  lamps 
before  reflectors. 

Rolhng  clouds  of  smoke  can  be  ren- 
dered by  steam  on  which  red  and  yellow 
light  is  played. 

The  effect  of  blood  from  a  wound  is  pro- 
duced by  glycerine  mingled  with  a  crim- 
son dyestuff. 

Snow  on  the  garments  of  a  character 
can  be  simulated  best  by  apphcations  of 
wet  salt,  just  before  the  character  makes 
his  entrance. 

Wine  is  best  made  from  cold  tea.  Re- 
member that  ginger  ale  or  any  other  "soft 
drink,"  used  for  this  purpose,  will  some- 
times play  tricks  with  one's  throat  and 
vocal  organs  for  an  instant  after  di-inking 
it,  and  so  is  risky. 

A  little  electric  stove,  connected  up  and 
hidden  in  the  cottage  grate  or  old  time  fire- 
place, is  very  useful,  if  the  play  requires 


182       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

the  use  of  hot  water  or  a  bit  of  cooking. 
"The  real  steam"  of  the  tea  kettle,  the  real 
scent  of  toast  or  bacon,  will  please  -the 
average  audience  more  than  one  would  be- 
lieve possible,  and  will  contribute  a  little 
also  to  the  verisimilitude  of  the  scene. 
Similarly,  any  bit  of  homely,  domestic 
routine,  like  setting  a  table,  serving  a  meal 
or  a  drink,  opening  the  mail,  to  choose  ran- 
dom examples,  should  always  be  faithfully 
presented  in  all  its  details,  supposing  that 
the  effect  of  reality  is  being  aimed  at  all 
through  the  production.  This  has  to  be 
judged  very  carefully.  Sometimes  any 
very  slight  excess  of  realistic  detail  will 
jar  terribly.  Here,  as  always,  one  has  to 
think  of  the  play  as  a  whole,  even  when 
studying  the  smallest  details. 

To  shift  the  scenes  expeditiously,  a 
pretty  perfect  system  is  necessary.  Re- 
member that  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  let  the 
entr'acte  intervals  be  more  than  ten  or  (at 


Stage  and  Scenery — Shifting    183 

the  outside)  twelve  minutes  in  duration. 
Smartness  and  speed  in  handling  are  es- 
sential ;  and  these  depend  on  establishing  a 
well  articulated  movement  of  the  carpen- 
ter's crew  and  that  of  the  property  man. 
If  you  are  dependent  on  amateur  and 
green  assistance  in  this  very  important  de- 
partment, do  not  fail  to  rehearse  the  set- 
ting and  striking  of  every  act  several  times 
before  the  performance. 

The  first  thing  to  do  is  to  have  the  prop- 
erty man  collect  in  perfectly  defined 
places,  every  bit  of  furniture,  accessories, 
and  properties  used  in  each  act,  where  they 
can  be  instantly  handled. 

Next,  stack  up  in  separate  places  the 
scenery  for  each  act,  so  there  will  be  no 
confusion  here,  no  handling  of  the  wrong 
pieces. 

Suppose  the  command  "Strike !"  is  given 
by  the  stage  manager,  as  the  signal  to  re- 
move the  setting  of  one  scene  and  put  on 


184       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

another.  Instantly  the  carpenter's  crew 
sHde  and  carry  off  the  sides  and  the  rear 
of  the  scenery  walls;  the  moment  there  is 
sufficient  room  the  property  man's  crew 
carry  out  all  the  movable  articles  on  the 
stage,  and  place  them  in  a  pile  together. 
Next,  the  property  men  bring  on  the  stage 
all  the  heavier  pieces  of  furniture,  the  floor 
coverings,  of  the  next  act.  Retiring,  they 
give  place  to  the  scene  shifters,  who  first 
place  in  position  the  rear  wall,  then  the  side 
walls,  lastly  the  ceiling  and  the  backing. 
When  the  scenery  is  in  place,  the  property 
men  bring  on  the  small  articles  and  dispose 
them  where  the  action  of  the  play  requires 
them.  The  moment  the  scenery  is  in 
place,  the  electrician  will  start  connecting 
up  any  lamps,  wall  lights,  or  hanging  table 
lamps,  which  are  needed.  And  it  is  un- 
necessary to  say  that  all  the  prehminary 
work  of  this  sort  is  to  be  completed  long 
before     the     performance     starts.     The 


Stage  and  Scenery — Orchestra     185 

electrician  can  work  but  just  so  fast, 
and  his  work  at  the  time  of  scene  shifting 
must  be  hmited  to  screwing  in  bulbs  and 
making  other  simple  connections.  Never 
try  to  carry  bulky  properties  through 
scenery  doors;  handle  all  the  properties 
of  the  larger  sort  when  the  stage  is  clear. 
Window  curtains,  portieres,  and  other 
wall  fixtures,  should  always  be  so  hung  or 
otherwise  arranged  that  they  can  be  car- 
ried out  bodily  with  the  "flats"  of  scen- 
ery. 

THE   ORCHESTRA 

If  use  IS  made  of  incidental  music  dur- 
ing the  action  of  the  play,  and  in  the  in- 
termissions, the  stage  manager  and  the  or- 
chestra leader  must  understand  one  an- 
other clearly  on  several  points. 

Entr'acte  music  ought  to  be  in  keeping 
with  the  general  character  of  the  play. 

If  music  is  required  during  the  play,  as 


186       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

an  accompaniment  to  the  action,  the  stage 
manager  must  give  tlie  orchestra  leader  in 
wi'iting  such  unmistakable  cues  and  other 
directions  as  will  forestall  any  chance  of 
missing  the  connection  between  the  Hues, 
the  action,  and  the  music.  It  is  impera- 
tive that  the  orchestra  leader  shall  rehearse 
any  and  all  incidental  music  with  the  com- 
pany, certainly  once  (at  the  final  re- 
hearsal) and,  if  possible,  much  oftener. 

Ten  minutes  before  the  play  starts,  the 
orchestra  must  be  signaled  to  its  place. 

The  best  signal  for  the  orchestra  to 
cease  playing,  as  the  curtain  is  ready  to  be 
raised,  is  wink  the  lights  on  the  music 
stands,  dim  the  lights  in  the  auditorium, 
and  switch  on  the  footlights,  in  this  order. 
The  use  of  a  bell  as  a  signal  for  the  curtain 
to  be  raised  is  now  out  of  fashion.  The 
signals  with  the  lights  are  less  obtrusive 
but  equally  emj^hatic,  and  are  therefore  to 
be  preferred. 


Concluding  Words  187 

IN   CONCLUSION 

Amateurs  sometimes  think  of  all  the 
work  connected  with  the  mechanical  part 
of  a  production  as  uninteresting.  They 
are  apt  to  believe  that  acting  the  play  is 
about  all  there  is  to  a  performance.  But 
it  is  to  be  sincerely  hoped  that  all  groups 
of  amateurs  who  wish  to  get  all  the  good 
and  all  the  pleasure  possible  out  of  their 
work  and  fun,  will  undertake  to  learn  the 
duties  and  the  responsibilities  of  the  cos- 
tumers,  scene  builders,  electricians,  and  in- 
dispensable "Props," — of  those,  in  short, 
whose  work  contributes  directly  to  the  ar- 
tistic general  effect  of  the  piece. 

If  amateur  productions  are  reduced  to 
a  mere  learning  of  lines  and  "business," 
under  nervous  coaching,  they  are  not 
worth  bothering  about.  If  they  are  so 
conceived  as  to  make  a  call  not  only  on  the 
histrionic  ability  but  also  on  the  ingenuity, 


188       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

taste,  and  cultivation  of  the  people  organ- 
izing them,  amateur  plays  are  of  very 
great  value  indeed. 

And  that,  to-day,  there  is  a  great  and 
growing  interest  among  responsible  people 
concerning  the  theater  and  the  amateur 
production,  and  the  whole  question  of  the 
relation  of  the  stage  to  the  community, 
is  a  matter  for  profound  congratulation. 
For  until  the  theater  becomes  a  popular 
institution  in  every  sense,  it  is  still  an  alien, 
still  an  exotic,  still  nothing  but  a  play- 
house for  the  well-to-do.  And  that  the 
amateur  play  is  the  means  of  bringing 
thousands  of  persons  to  a  knowledge  of 
the  theater,  to  an  interest  in  it,  to  a  love 
for  it,  is  perfectly  true.  For  this  reason 
alone,  perhaps,  were  there  no  others, 
thoughtful  people  should  encourage  by 
every  means,  and  support  with  en- 
thusiasm, all  efforts  to  make  popular  and 


Concluding  Words  189 

vital  that  kind  of  acting  and  production 
which  this  little  book  hopes,  in  a  small 
way,  to  make  easier. 


A  GLOSSARY 


OF 


COMMON  STAGE  TERMS 

ACT,  a  principal  division  of  a  play.  Also  applied 
to  a  short  play,  monologue,  dance,  song,  or 
exhibition,  presented  by  an  individual  or  a 
small  company,  as  a  number  on  a  program. 

APRON,  the  part  of  the  stage  extending  toward 
the  audience  from  the  proscenium. 

ARCH,  a  section  of  upriglit  scenery  which  in- 
cludes a  principal  doorway  or  archway. 

AT  RISE,  at  the  beginning  of  a  play  or  an  act. 

BACK,  the  region  behind  the  visible  stage;  also 
called  "  back  stage." 

BACK  DROP,  a  single  piece  of  upright  scenery 
extending  the  entire  width  of  the  visible  stage 
and  forming  its  rear  boundary;  used  as  a 
background,  most  often  with  exterior  sets,  de- 
picting landscape  and  sky. 

BACKING,  sections  of  upriglit  scenery  placed  be- 
hind doors,  windows,  and  other  openings  in 
interior  sets. 

190 


Glossary  191 

BORDERS,  sections  of  scenery  depending  from 
above  the  stage,  of  varying  length,  represent- 
ing (typically)  the  sky,  a  ceiling,  or  branches 
of  trees.  "Cut  borders"  is  sometimes  applied 
to  sections  of  upright  scenery  used  on  the 
sides  of  the  stage  to  represent  trees  and 
shrubs,  and  to  mask  (usually)  entrances. 
"Wood  cuts"  is  another  name  for  the  same 
pieces. 

BORDER  LIGHTS,  rows  of  lights  giving  illu- 
mination from  above. 

BRACE,  a  jointed  pole  used  to  support  scenery. 

BUNCH  LIGHTS,  clusters  of  lights  on  portable 
standards  serving  to  illuminate  special  areas, 
from  the  sides. 

CROSS  (TO),  to  move  from  one  side  of  the  stage 
toward  another,  in  any  direction. 

DIMMER,  a  device  to  regulate  the  intensity  of 
the  lights. 

DISCOVERED,  present  on  the  stage  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  play  or  act. 

DOCK,  the  region  under  the  stage. 

DOWN,  in  the  direction  of  the  audience.  Also 
called  "Down  stage"  (as  either  an  adverb  or 
an  adjective:  e.g.: — "Crosses  down  stage; 
raises  down  stage  arm"). 

DROPS,  pieces  of  scenery  extending  the  entire 
width  and  height  of  the  visible  stage,  to  sup- 
ply  backgrounds,  hung  at  varying  distances 


192       Amateur  Stage  Directing 

from  the  front.  "Act  drops"  are  the  back- 
grounds for  large  divisions  of  the  play; 
"scene  drops"  are  the  backgrounds  of  sub- 
divisions. Drops  are  sometimes  employed 
merely  to  create  an  effect  of  haze  or  shadow, 
in  which  case  they  are  made  of  a  special 
"gauze"  to  be  in  various  degrees  transparent. 

FLAT,  a  section  of  upright  scenery. 

FLIES,  a  gallery  above  the  stage  from  which 
scenery  is  lowered  and  raised. 

FLYMAN,  an  employee  who  handles  scenery  from 
the  flies. 

FOOTS,  the  footlights. 

FRONT,  the  part  of  the  visible  stage  nearest  the 
audience.  "Out  front,"  before  the  curtain  or 
in  the  audience. 

FRONT  SCENE,  a  portion  of  a  play  performed 
before  a  very  shallow  set  of  scenery.  Some- 
times called  "a  scene  in  one." 

GRIP,  a  scene  shifter.  Assistant  to  the  stage  car- 
penter. 

GROOVES,  a  series  of  grooves  built  out  from  the 
flies  at  regular  intervals,  to  support  the  tops 
of  pieces  of  upright  scenery.  Not  often 
found  in  modern  theaters. 

LASH  LINE,  a  cord  used  to  bind  together  and 
steadying  adjoining  sections  of  upright 
scenery. 

LEFT,  the  actor's  left;  abbreviated  to  L. 


Glossary  193 

LIGHT  PLOT,  a  statement  of  all  lighting  ef- 
fects required  in  a  play,  with  detailed  direc- 
tions regarding  their  start,  duration,  intensity, 
and  character,  supplied  to  the  electrician. 

MUSIC  PLOT,  a  statement  of  all  the  incidental 
music  required  in  a  play,  with  cues  and  direc- 
tions for  beginning  and  ending  each  selection, 
furnished  to  the  orchestra  leader. 

ON,  on  the  visible   stage. 

OFF,  off  the  visible  stage. 

PRACTICABLE,  or  "practical,"  applied  to  all 
properties  and  to  pieces  of  scenery  which  can 
actually  be  used.  Real  food  and  drink,  a 
window  which  opens,  a  door  which  locks,  for 
instance,  are  "practical." 

PROPERTIES,  the  various  articles  required  for 
the  actors'  use  in  the  action  of  the  play. 

PROPERTY  MAN,  the  person  who  has  charge  of 
the  properties. 

PROSCENIUM,  the  arch  framing  the  visible 
stage. 

RETURNS,  sections  of  upright  scenery  set  on  the 
right  and  left,  just  inside  the  proscenium,  ad- 
joining the  side  flats  and  connected  with  them 
at  right  angles. 

RIGGING  LOFT,  the  flies  or  fly  gallery. 

RUN,  an  artificial  inclined  plane  leading  to  the 
visible  stage,  as  a  path  or  a  staircase. 

SCENE,  a  subdivision  of  the  play's  action. 


194       Ainateur  Stage  Directing 

SCENE  PLOT,  a  list  of  the  "sets"  required  in  the 
successive  acts  or  scenes  of  a  play,  furnished 
to  the  stage  carpenter. 

SET,  the  scenery  of  any  part  of  a  play.  ("The 
second   act   set.") 

SET  PIECE,  a  structure  built  out  from  the 
scenery  or  isolated  on  the  stage,  as  a  tree,  a 
mound,  a  wall,  a  well  curb. 

SPOT  LIGHT,  a  light  focussed  on  a  small  area  to 
give  prominence  to  an  individual  actor  or 
small  group,  or  to  impart  a  special  color  to  a 
part  of  the  setting.  Operated  from  behind 
and  above  the  audience. 

STRIP  LIGHTS,  short  sections  of  lights,  in  rows, 
with  reflectors,  portable,  to  illuminate  special 
areas. 

TORMENTORS,  the  passages  between  the  re- 
turns and  the  proscenium. 

TRAP,  a  hole  cut  in  the  floor  of  the  stage. 

UP,  toward  the  rear  of  the  visible  stage. 

UPSTAGE,  the  part  of  the  visible  stage  farthest 
from  the  audience. 


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